An Essay on the Documents Related to Korea in the Ottoman and Republic Archives of Turkey

A. Merthan DÜNDAR*

Abstract

In recent years, the number of the researches concerning the Asian countries has been increasing in Turkey. Generally, Japan, China and Korea are on the focus as a research area. Especially, increasing tendency of bilateral trade affairs with China and Japan has drawn attention of the Turkish researchers. However, the number of academic studies concerning the Korea is relatively inconsiderable than the others because there are not close relations between two countries in the history. The most important work introducing the Korea to the Ottoman society in the early 20th century was “Alem-i İslâm ve Japonya’da İntişar-ı İslâmiyet” which was written by Abdürreşit İbrahim as a kind of travel-memories. Furthermore, Ottoman government’s interest in Korea is mainly via Japan, China and Russia. There exist 16 documents relating to Korea in the Ottoman Archive. In the Republic Archive there are 36 documents relating to Korea and most of them were prepared at the Korea War period. Analysis of these documents will be a contribution for the Turkish-Korean Relations history. Accountancy, if we consider the fact that Japan ruled Korea from 1910 to1945, the researches on Korea will also to show the way to the Japanese history.

Keywords: Turkish Archives; Far East; Korea; Korean War; Turkey-Korea Relations.

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