ANKARA
Turkish Culture and Tourism Ministry casts light on history with its restored film and image archive, with never seen before images of Ottoman Sultans Resat (Mehmet-V)and Vahdeddin (Mehmet-VI) as well as the founder of the modern Turkish republic Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and the first democratically elected prime minister of Turkey Adnan Menderes.
The ministry opened the doors of its restored archive that sheds light not only to cultural history but also the political history of Turkey from Ottoman era to Republic, exclusively to AA. Cinema Director General Cem Erkul told AA correspondent that the archive was restored with cutting edge technology.
He said other than the films and documentaries, they would start to add "document films", that were seized and shelved in some government agencies after 1980 coup, to the archive.
Erkul also said they had the never seen before images of Ottoman Sultans Resat and Vahdeddin as well as the founder of the modern Turkish republic Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and the first democratically elected prime minister of Turkey Adnan Menderes. Saying that those were the visual memory of Turkey, Erkul added those materials would be digitally catalogued and restored and in that way they would be both protected in archive and duplicated for research.
Ottoman Sultan Resat welcoming Austria Emperor in his Istanbul visit, Sultan Vahdeddin attending Sultan Abdulhamid II's funeral, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk addressing the Turkish Parliament in 1936, Ataturk welcoming the last king of Iran Reza Pahlavi and Adnan Menderes visiting Athens with his delegation in 1950s were reported to be some of the never seen before images in the archive.
