The following comes from Jewish Voice for Peace who interview Professor Esra Danacioglu in Istanbul together with an article by Jonathan Cook who writes about forged documents which appear to accord settlers land rights. As part of the Ottoman Empire land which is disputed in Israel and Palestine was recorded for over a century.
“As Israel and Turkey conduct a complex military exchange, anti-militarist and feminist groups in both countries are developing a broad web of reciprocal ties. This network has provided Jewish Peace News with access to an added, significant perspective on the issue presented in Jonathan Cook’s item below. We extend our warm thanks to Esra Danacioglu for her unique contribution to this post. Professor Danacioglu teaches at the Department of Modern Turkish History at Yildiz Technical University, Istanbul. Her expertise is in Modern Turkish History, and particularly during World War II.”
Racheli Gai & Rela Mazali, Jewish Voice for Peace
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Probably the one of most important archival collections inherited from the Ottoman Empire is the documents on land tenure, taxation and real estates, due to fact that the Ottoman records are main and – in some case the unique – sources for the land disputes in Middle Eastern and Balkan Countries as well as in Turkey. Ottoman Archival documents are kept in different archives in Turkey. Although the most important and rich collections are in “Directorate of Ottoman Archives” based in Istanbul, Court Registers (Kadi Sicilleri) are in “National Library” in Ankara and Land Registers are in the “Archive of General Directorate of Land Registry and Cadastral”. One of the main responsibilities of the Directorate is to keep -past and present- public registers for real estates. Ottoman document on real estates concerning Turkey and former Ottoman Lands are kept as a separate branch in the Directorate Archive as “Collection of Old Registers” (Kuyud-u Kadime). Collections of Kuyud-u Kadime which
span a period of 500 hundreds years. Even for the post 1847 period, – simply called – Land Registry Archive has almost 24.000 volume of register books, 8400 of them are records about the land ownership in Balkans and Middle East. It is estimated that documents of land ownership in Ottoman Palestine for the period between 1835-1918 are approximately 160.000 pages.
Palestine residents of Sheik Jarrah quarter were not the first person to have an access to the archive to apply to Turkish Documents on long-standing land disputes in the region. President of Egypt Husni Mubarak also demanded the documents concerning Gaza Strip in 1989. Moreover, it is claimed that Turkish Government has already given the Palestine Authority a microfilm collection of the documents concerning land tenures and properties in Ottoman Palestine.
Esra Danacioglu
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