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Remembered Today:

Turkish PoW letters


michaeldr

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An illustrated article in today's Hürriyet Daily News from Turkey 
see http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/photo-turkish-red-crescent-to-deliver-letters-written-100-years-ago-by-prisoners-of-war-139063#photo-1

suggests that the Turkish Red Crescent is about to release, or try to deliver(?) some 30,000 letters written by prisoners of war a century ago. 
The article seems to imply that these letters are from both Turkish and Allied PoWs (however, this needs clarifying)
It is also stated that the Turkish Red Crescent has established a “Prisoner Index Card and Letters Transcription Project” to help researchers.

 

I hope that this post will catch they of one of our Turkish members and that further clarification can be gained

Edited by michaeldr
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The letter from Mrs Witham that they show on their site may well be for this man ?

 

Corporal   WITHAM, WILLIAM HERBERT

Service Number 1530

Died 12/08/1915

Aged 30

"B" Coy. 1st/8th Bn.
Hampshire Regiment

Son of Joseph and Phillis Witham, of Quay Cottage, Newport, Isle of Wight.

Thursday, August 12, 1915 Age 30 HELLES MEMORIAL

 

TurkLetterIoW.JPG.26fa48d4a9aa6b38df9fffa16dc74183.JPG                       

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Thanks Charlie for posting this and for alerting me to this thread via my own - apologies for cross-posting! I am very tied up with university work right now and have missed many a post... Anyway, I walk past the Ankara RC building about 1-2 times a week if on my way to the British Institute at Ankara, and I'll try and make a call when things ease up somewhat towards 1st Jan. The director, by the way - if I have this right - was the author of an important book on Ottoman re-armament - N Yorulmaz, Arming the Sultan: German Arms Trade and Personal Diplomacy in the Ottoman Empire

 

Julian

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Julian,

This could be a tremendously useful source of info on those men who disappeared with little trace in captivity. Whilst the Lists the TRC issued are presumably the same as those available at the ICRC site I suspect that ICRC records are missing a lot of sheets. It is also clear that a lot was lost in the translation English to phonetic to Turkish to French and back to English. I wonder if they hold the source lists still ?

The personal correspondence , particularly if there is any 'prisoner to family' that was undelivered/withheld/censored could provide unique information as to certain men's fates. If you do get to TRC I am sure you will update us on what is likely to be forthcoming and when even if you cannot get involved?

Regards

Charlie

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I have contacted them offering help - but not in the near future! - and still awaiting a reply...

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  • 8 months later...

Julian et al,

Has there been any progress with the Red Crescent Archives? I am particularly interested in the Allied Lists of Ottoman PoWs held by the British and these feature in the Hurriyet Daily News article - Pages 10 and 14 show tantalising glimpses of the Allied Lists, more or less confirming that those supplied to the Ottomans during WW1 still exist in the RC Archives. As far as I can establish from limited correspondence in the ICRC Archives, the Allied lists were produced every 2-3 weeks from November 1914 and sent to Turkey. Unfortunately, unlike the equivalents for German, Austro-Hungarian and Bulgarian PoWs, copies of the Ottoman Lists were not sent to the ICRC and therefore do not feature in their excellent website.

Searching the online TRC archive catalogue suggests that these Lists are possibly located in Box (Kutu) 764 Documents (Belgeler) 1-96, titled Lists of Turkish prisoners in Russia and England (Rusya ve İngiltere deki Türk esirlerin listeleri ve kendilerine Salib-i Ahmer ce yapılan yardımların dökümü). Unfortunately, I have not been able to get any reply from the TRC Archives to confirm the location (maybe due to my reliance on Google Translate, as I do not speak Turkish).

If you could help, or advise of anyone who could conduct research locally at the Red Crescent Archives, I would be most grateful.

Kind Regards,

Alan

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I suspect Julian could miss this because of that wretched System update a little while ago that dropped all (?) the links to threads one had posted on more than a few months old. I certainly didn't get a notification. Just by chance I saw the post.

 

Thus a little alert to @trajan

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On 07/08/2019 at 12:25, xv229 said:

Julian et al,

Has there been any progress with the Red Crescent Archives? I am particularly interested in the Allied Lists of Ottoman PoWs held by the British and these feature in the Hurriyet Daily News article - Pages 10 and 14 show tantalising glimpses of the Allied Lists, more or less confirming that those supplied to the Ottomans during WW1 still exist in the RC Archives. As far as I can establish from limited correspondence in the ICRC Archives, the Allied lists were produced every 2-3 weeks from November 1914 and sent to Turkey. Unfortunately, unlike the equivalents for German, Austro-Hungarian and Bulgarian PoWs, copies of the Ottoman Lists were not sent to the ICRC and therefore do not feature in their excellent website.

Searching the online TRC archive catalogue suggests that these Lists are possibly located in Box (Kutu) 764 Documents (Belgeler) 1-96, titled Lists of Turkish prisoners in Russia and England (Rusya ve İngiltere deki Türk esirlerin listeleri ve kendilerine Salib-i Ahmer ce yapılan yardımların dökümü). Unfortunately, I have not been able to get any reply from the TRC Archives to confirm the location (maybe due to my reliance on Google Translate, as I do not speak Turkish).

If you could help, or advise of anyone who could conduct research locally at the Red Crescent Archives, I would be most grateful.

Kind Regards,

Alan

 

On 08/08/2019 at 00:14, charlie962 said:

 

I suspect Julian could miss this because of that wretched System update a little while ago that dropped all (?) the links to threads one had posted on more than a few months old. I certainly didn't get a notification. Just by chance I saw the post.

 

Thus a little alert to @trajan

 

I did indeed miss this post from Alan who kindly sent me a PM with the same text and so I'll reply here - and thanks Charlie92 for explaining how I could have missed it!

 

Well, I have to admit that I have had no time to follow-up on these archives. I did send them an e-mail offering to arrange help if needed but received no reply. I was thinking of getting our history department interested in the material as a post-graduate project, but with Norman Stone now in another place altogether that is not currently possible...!!!

 

My Turkish is not so good either, but I will ask my Turkish wife if she can help on checking on the location you are interested in, and if she has her hands full (and we are about to start a 5 day religious holiday here!), then I will direct one of my of my grad students to the task - she owes me a BIG favour as I handed over to her for her own research all the material I had collected for a project that never quite took off, including my own translation from the French of a lenghty article on the same subject! 

 

Julian

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