VEKAM

VEKAM publications

Anameriç, Hakan and Rukancı, Fatih, Posta Pullarında Başkent Ankara (1922-2008) (The Capital City Ankara in Postage Stamps), İstanbul, 2011

Ayaokur, Alev, Müzelerde Bilgi Yönetimi, (Information Management in Museums), Ankara, 2014

Bayraktar, Nuray (ed.), Korumada Sivil Mimarlık (Civilian Architecture in Conservation), Ankara, 2014

Bayraktar, Nuray (ed.), Tarih Yazımında Sivil Mimarlık Çalıştay Notları (Civil Architecture in Historiography Workshop Notes) Ankara, 2014

Bayraktar, Nuray (ed.), Sivil Mimari Bellek, Ankara 1930-1980 (Civil Architectural Memory, Ankara: 1930-1980) Ankara, 2017

Berkes, Turgut (ed.), Geçmişten Geleceğe Kitabın Serüveni, Bildiriler (Book’s Quest: From Past to Future, Papers) Ankara, 2011

Berkes, Turgut (ed.), Türkiye’de Arşivler ve Arşivcilik Uygulamaları (Archives and Archive Management in Turkey), Ankara, 2011

Cengizkan, Ali, Koçzâde Ahmet Vehbi Bey ve Bir İnşaatın Öyküsü: Ankara Hukuk Mektebi (Koçzâde Ahmet Vehbi Bey and a Construction Story; Ankara Law School), Ankara, 2004

Gençkaya, F. Ömer, Eğitimin Başkenti Ankara, İstanbul, 2008/Ankara, Capital of Education, Ankara 2011

Kaçar, Ayşe Duygu, Kültür/Mekân: Gazi Orman Çiftliği, Ankara (Culture/Space: Gazi Forest Farm, Ankara) Ankara, 2015

Kolektif, Eski Dostlar Aramızda: Reklamlarda Ankara 1935-1967/Among Old Friends: Advertisements on Ankara 1935-1967, Ankara, 2007

Kolektif, Geçmişten Geleceğe Türkiye’de Müzecilik IV-Bir Açık Hava Müzesi: Ankara ve Çevresi (The Past and Future of Museology in Turkey IV- An Open Air Museum: Ankara and its Surroundings), Ankara 2010

Köksal, Yonca and Polatel, Mehmet (ed.), Avrupa Arşivlerinde Osmanlı İmparatorluğu (The Ottoman Empire in the Archives of Europe), Ankara, 2014

Kunstadter, M. Melissa (ed.), Ankara Palas’ın Unutulmaz Gecelerinden Sahneler (Scenes from the Unforgettable Nights of Ankara Palace), Ankara, 2006

Niyazioğlu, Sinan, İroni ve Gerilim: İkinci Dünya Savaşı Yıllarında İstanbul ve Ankara’da Savaş Algısı/Irony and Tension: Perception of War in Istanbul and Ankara during the Second World War, Ankara, 2016

Oğuz, Esin Sultan (ed.), İhtisas Kütüphaneleri Paneli (Specialized Libraries Panel), Ankara, 2007

Önen, B. Zeynep (ed.), 80 Yılda Devr-i Türkiye: 80 Kare Ankara/Around Turkey in 80 Years: Ankara in 80 Frames, Ankara, 2004

Önen, B. Zeynep et al. (ed.), Geçmişten Geleceğe Türkiye’de Müzecilik I-Sempozyum (The Past and Future of Museology in Turkey I- Symposium), Ankara, 2008

Önen, B. Zeynep and Türkyılmaz, Mehtap (ed.), Geçmişten Geleceğe Türkiye’de Müzecilik II-Eğitim, İşletmecilik ve Turizm (The Past and Future of Museology in Turkey II- Education, Management and Tourism), Ankara, 2009)

Önen, B. Zeynep (ed.), Geçmişten Geleceğe Türkiye’de Müzecilik III-Ankara’da Müze, Müzede Ankara (The Past and Future of Museology in Turkey III-Museums in Ankara, Ankara in Museums), Ankara, 2009

Önen, B. Zeynep and Türkyılmaz, Mehtap (ed.), Türkiye’de Arşivler ve Arşivcilik Uygulamaları (Archives and Archive Management in Turkey), Ankara, 2011

Önen, B. Zeynep and Türkyılmaz, Mehtap (ed.), Geçmişten Geleceğe Kitabın Serüveni (Book’s Quest: From Past To Future), Ankara, 2011

Sönmez, Savaş, Ankaralı Bulmacalar (Ankara Crosswords), Ankara, 2005, 2016

Şimşek, G. Hüseyin and Palancı, Necmettin (ed.), Ankara Halk Türküleri ve Oyun Havaları Nota Kitabı (Ankara Folk and Dance Songs Notation) Ankara, 2001

Tanyer, Turan, Cumhuriyet Dönemi Ankara’sının Sosyal Hayatından Sahneler, Ankara, 2006/Scenes from the Social Life of Ankara during the Early Republican Period, Ankara, 2016

Toklu, Gürkan et al. (ed.), Ankara İli Beslenme Alışkanlıkları ve Mutfak Kültürü Sempozyum Bildirileri ve Katalog (Food Culture and Cuisine in the Ankara Region, Symposium Papers), Ankara, 1999

Toygar, Kamil and Berkok, Nimet (ed.), Ankara Mutfak Kültürü ve Yemekleri, (Ankara Cuisine and Dishes) Ankara, 1999

Türkyılmaz, Mehtap et al. (ed.), Kur(t)uluş. 1923, Ankara, 2013

Türkyılmaz, Mehtap et al. (ed.), Cumhuriyet’i O’nu O Cumhuriyet’ini Büyüttü… Vehbi Koç (1901-1996)/A Son and a Pioneer of the Republic… Vehbi Koç (1901-1996), Ankara, 2013

Türkyılmaz, Mehtap and Kırcı, A. Beril (ed.), 19. Yüzyıldan 20. Yüzyıla Osmanlı İmparatorluğu: Mücadele-Koleksiyoncuların Seçkisi/Ottoman Empire from 19th to 20th Century: Struggle-Collectors’ Selection, Ankara, 2015

Uysal, Y. Yeşim et al., Sivil Mimari Bellek: Ankara 1930-1980 (Civil Architectural Memory, Ankara 1930-1980), Ankara, 2014

Yenişehirlioğlu, Filiz and Yücel, Gözde Çerçioğlu (ed.), Tarihi Dokumak: Bir Kentin Gizemi, Sof (Weaving the History: Mystery of a City, Sof) Ankara, 2018

Yıldırım, Ayşe Ege, Anadolu’dan Bir Tanık: Bengüboz’un Objektifinden Mudurnu’da Erken Cumhuriyet Dönemi/Eyewitness from Anatolia: Mudurnu in the Early Republican Era through the Lens of Bengüboz, Ankara, 2016

Koç Family Memories at the Family’s Orchard House in Keçiören

Vehbi Koç

I used to look with envy at the carts, horses, clothes and dresses of the residents of Keçiören who went past us every day. Most of these Christians sold their houses after leaving Ankara. My father bought the house and garden now in Keçiören from Marshall Fevzi Çakmak in 1923 for 2,900 Turkish lira. This is our current home in Keçiören... My four children were born in Keçiören. So we have great memories of this house in Keçiören. We stayed in this house over summer up until 1954.

Can Dündar, Özel Arşivinden Belgeler ve Anılarıyla Vehbi Koç (Vehbi Koç through Documents and Memoirs from his Private Archive), 5th Edition, Doğan Kitap, Istanbul, p. 21

Rahmi M. Koç

My father bought this orchard house in 1923. We four siblings were all born in this house, in the same room, on the same bedstead, in the corner room upstairs. My late mother would always come here at the start of the summer and would always stay two months, before going back to Büyükdere in Istanbul. Our house had wonderful Ankara pears, brilliant apricots, unostentatious but tasty crisp apples and very sweet grapes. In those days, doctor Yusuf Hikmet lived behind us. Later on, Ankara parliamentarian Fevzi Daldal moved into that house. Opposite us was Hatice. Her grandson Atilla is there now. Down past the orchard was Recep Peker’s magnificent mansion and next to that was the parliamentarian Mr. Ekrem’s house. In short, we were surrounded by very upright neighbors. If my memory is correct, when the house was first bought it went through some restoration. After that it had various repairs, and finally there was a large restoration to bring it to the condition you see today. Marshall Fevzi Çakmak, a hero of the National Struggle, also lived here, making the house even more special for us.

http://vekam.org.tr/upload/userfiles/files/rahmikoç.pdf

Sevgi Gönül

When I look at the old days, I recall that we lived in one of the rare houses to have electricity, because at our friends’ houses they ate their evening meals under the light of kerosene lamps. There were blackout curtains. There was also a shelter that still remains there that I was afraid to even pass by. In our house’s safe we kept quinine rather than jewelry, gold or money.

You could find nothing to eat in Ankara in winter. We spent all summer in this orchard house preparing for winter. We collected apples and pears and lined them up in the store for eating in winter—in Ankara local jargon we made a spread. We would line up okra and eggplants on strings and leave them to dry in the sun. Trees like this apricot tree you see on the ground lined both sides like a two–sided crown. But we were only able to save one of them. We would collect the apricots and make dried fruit; we would collect tomatoes and make tomato paste.

There was a wire cupboard in the kitchen. I spent my childhood in this house with lips purple from blackcurrants and hands blackened by walnuts. My most important role was to shake a tin under the trees and scare away the birds from eating the cherries. And my favorite time was towards evening, holding a corner of a sheet opened under that mulberry tree in the corner to catch the mulberries as our butler shook the tree. I can count many, many other such memories.

http://vekam.org.tr/upload/userfiles/files/sevgigönül.pdf

Suna Kıraç

Our house was a two–story, plaster–and–wood, typical Ankara orchard house. It had an orchard and garden of around 24,000 square meters. Up the stone stairs on the front side there was a big green iron door which at that time seemed stately. The most important characteristics of the door were its sliding lock and the twin handles on the outside. It led to a large stone anteroom with rooms opening out onto it. On the top floor, there was a second big anteroom that was used as a parlor and a dining room and had bedrooms opening onto it.

We would wander around in the open air of the big garden and eat sweet and sour cherries and mulberries off the trees. We would play rope games and hopscotch in the garden. We spent our days riding bikes, playing ball, climbing trees and playing families under them. We would collect fresh fruit and vegetables. Blind man’s buff and puss–in–the–corner were a part of our lives. Our gardener Abdullah Ağa would go up a tree and shake it with his feet, and we would watch as the green–shelled walnuts and the ripe mulberries fell onto a sheet below.

My father, who as the head of the household was deeply worried by the Second World War, built a big shelter with two entrances in our house garden in Keçiören. As he told us, he kept this shelter well–equipped throughout the entire war, and he maintained his cautious attitude until the end of the war. The shelter was kept ready to be used at any time for a long while. As the country was saved from entering the war, over time the shelters filled with sand and water and fell into ruin. Every shelter would end up with a little hill above it that looked like a minibus.

On Ramadan evenings we would go up on this tiny hill and shout “The lamp is burning!” Also during Ramadan, the sound of the drum for sahur would be heard towards the morning, but it never scared us. Our raven–black nanny, Sevim, would scare us by saying “the boogymen are coming” when we wouldn’t sleep. At the same time, the poplar trees in the garden in front of our door would shake with a whispering sound, striking fear into our little hearts.

The nights at the orchard house were just as scary as the days were lovely and fun. In those days, there was no modern garden lighting. The orchard and garden were lit with tiny bulbs.

I will never forget one adventure I had in the orchard. Despite being a careful and cautious child, I still liked to take risks now and again. What I was most interested in was “how to go down steps on a bicycle”. Every day I was more intrigued. One day I began to go down the stone steps on my tricycle. I don’t remember the rest very clearly. When I opened my eyes my head was half sewn up, and I was surrounded by a doctor, my mother and all the women in my family. My interest had come at the cost of a scar.

Although our family were financially well–off, we lived like a traditional Turkish family. When we went to the orchard house in September and October, we would dry fruit and vegetables for the winter, making tomato paste out of tomatoes, pickles out of cucumbers and drying eggplants by pinning them to a piece of string to be made into a kind of dolma (stuffed vegetable) that was called “Aleppo dolma”. We used to line up the “pale pears”, that were then known as winter pears, in a room next to the outhouse, and we would dry the apricots and line them up in the orchard house to make a kind of stewed fruit that the Ankara people would call “zerdali kurusu”.

We used to make natural jam, that was stacked in lots of pots. There was never any waste. We made the most of every blessing from God. My mother kept quinine, absorbent cotton and iodine in a locked cupboard. In the environment of depravation during and after the war, quinine was a medicine that was valuable enough to keep in the safe, because the country was suffering an epidemic of malaria and typhus. The pencils we used in school would be sharpened with a knife so that there would be no waste. We used to walk to school. My father banned us from going by automobile.

At that time, toys were very limited. Wooden houses, wax dolls, straw baby strollers, slingshots for boys... That was all. We learnt to be happy with those things. We didn’t seek happiness in material things. In essence, there was neither great wealth as a country or as individuals. My big brother’s slingshots were regularly confiscated. When he found the place where the slingshots had been hidden in a cupboard in the orchard house, he would shout “We’ve found a mine! A mine!” That was wealth for us!