About Collection

Muzaffer Ergüder is a military-statesman who assumed important civil and military duties in the late Ottoman Empire and the Early Republic. Muzaffer Ergüder papers consist of documents, letters, photographs, lecture notes related to the Battle of the Sakarya dating back to the 1940s. As Muzaffer Ergüder was in active duty at the General Directorate of Transport and Shipment before and after the Battle of Sakarya, among the documents, the numeric data about the ammunition and manpower of the army during the Battle of the Sakarya as well as discussions related to the issues related to the battle can be found in the collection.  In addition, there are reports and photographs of Muzaffer Ergüder’s important works and trips in civil aviation at the Air Force Command, where he served after the establishment of the Republic. In addition to his state duties, Muzaffer Ergüder was also interested in the theoretical issues of military service. The notes that he took in the lessons in Military School (Harbiye) on mobilization are interesting. Also the collection includes Muzaffer Ergüder’s comments on the articles of the Armistice of Mudros and the Treaty of Sèvres. The Muzaffer Ergüder Collection, consisting 2452 documents in 20 files which are accessible through Suna Kıraç Library Digital Collections, will provide useful and new information for the academicians and researchers who are interested in the late Ottoman political and military history, the supply problems during the War of Independence, the theoretical debates on how civil aviation was institutionalized in the Early Republic and the mobilization in the 1930s.

 The Kuraner Collection, whose name we cannot find directly in the collection, but which we describe with the last names of the donors, includes documents from the Balkan War to the War of Independence, as well as a large collection of maps related to the Balkan Wars, World War I, War of Independence and The Early Republican Period. Documents related to Balkan Wars can be found on the issues as battles, military tactics, daily reports, intelligence information, subsistence and soldier problems and prisoner exchanges. The collection contains information on the orders and daily events written during the War of Independence. For this reason, it will be beneficial for researchers to compare the Kuraner and Muzaffer Ergüder collections while examining the subjects related to the Battle of Sakarya.

In addition to the military issues, there are also documents related to Kuraner’s commercial activities that he engaged in during the II. Constitutional Monarchy Period. The Kuraner Collection, consisting of 527 documents in 22 files which are accessible through Suna Kıraç Library Digital Collections, will provide useful and new information for academics and researchers interested in military history.