Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Sanat Tarihi Yilligi, sa.33, ss.367-404, 2024 (ESCI)
The Ottoman Empire did not yet have a modern road transportation network both within and among cities during the early 20th century. The existing roads, a significant number of which were established along old caravan routes, were also inadequate. To overcome this deficiency, the Ottoman government (Committee of Union and Progress 1908–1918) issued a decree in early 1910, under the Ministry of Trade and Public Works, with the aim of modernising infrastructure such as roads and bridges in key locations such as Istanbul, the capital, and major provincial centres like Bursa and Erzurum in Anatolia. Nevertheless, in the military and educational sectors, the Ottoman Empire faced a shortage of skilled technical staff and engineers for these initiatives. Given this situation, the Ottoman Empire sought assistance from its primary ally, the German Empire, to provide technical professionals. Following the announcement of the Turkish government’s intention to recruit German engineers and architects for infrastructure projects in various German newspapers and magazines, twelve experts applied for this assignment, but only five of them were chosen and invited to Istanbul. Research has been conducted in Turkish and German archives within this framework to investigate the criteria for admission to service, the social and legal challenges encountered during their service, and the strategies and actions of German architects and engineers such as Köhler, Zöller, Beutner, Weise, and Höppner, who were recruited by the Ottoman Empire. Some findings from these archives are shared in this article. The archival documents evaluated in this article demonstrate that, despite its good intentions, the Union and Progress government lacked the financial means to undertake public works, leading to difficulties in paying the salaries of the foreign experts hired by the Turkish government and in covering the costs of the planned works. Most importantly, the foreign experts employed in the Ottoman provinces, where Eastern culture and way of life prevailed, faced problems of integration with local administrators and officials. Archival sources show that, due to a lack of resources and incompatibility, most of the experts brought from Germany, with a few exceptions, were sent back to their countries after 1-2 years stay. With the exception of the works of Architect Lehmann and Engineer Köhler in Istanbul and Engineer Höppner in Erzurum Province, the archival sources examined do not sufficiently provide concrete examples of the plans and practises of German architects and engineers recruited to Turkish service during their tenure. However, what has been identified, albeit in limited numbers, is presented in this article. This study shows that, due to the shortage of local technical staff, the influential positions in the Ministry of Trade and Public Works, which was responsible for infrastructure and superstructure as well as public buildings, were seized by foreign experts, and that there was serious competition between France and Germany for the import of all kinds of technical and construction materials needed for the modernisation of roads and cities from companies in their own countries. This study also shows that these two countries engaged in a secret war to establish dominance in every field of the weakened Ottoman Empire.