By Bosphorus News Türkiye Desk
Türkiye's General Directorate of Mapping has disclosed the research behind a digital map of 172 Turkish military cemeteries and memorials in 48 countries, a project first released to the public on July 23. The work combines location data with archival verification and specially drawn depictions of cemeteries, uniforms, ships and aircraft.
The Ministry of National Defense institution officially named the project the "Map of Turkish Military Cemeteries and Memorials Abroad." Its July announcement said the collection was designed to give users direct access to the locations of sites outside Türkiye associated with Turkish military history.
Records checked across several institutions
Lieutenant Colonel Fatih Kalle, head of the General Directorate of Mapping's Printing Branch, told Anadolu Agency on August 21 that the work took about a year.
The team collected information with Türkiye's Foreign Ministry and the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TİKA), then sought historical checks from the Atatürk Supreme Council for Culture, Language and History, National Defense University and the Archives and Military History Department.
The map goes beyond placing standardized markers on geographic coordinates. Where records allowed, designers reproduced the appearance of individual cemeteries and memorials and added period military uniforms, weapons, ships and aircraft.
For Turkish airmen associated with Brookwood in Britain, aircraft were drawn with historically accurate configurations and their original tail numbers. Ottoman vessels were reconstructed with reference to historian İdris Bostan's work on oared and sailing ships, including period-appropriate sail arrangements where surviving images showed only the hull.
Refah and TCG Kocatepe recorded without grave markers
The designers also had to account for personnel without conventional graves that could be plotted.
Those who died aboard the Refah ship in the Mediterranean and TCG Kocatepe were represented through illustrations of the vessels because no individual grave markers are available for them.
The collection also includes diplomats, military personnel, security officers and civilian staff who died while serving at Turkish missions abroad. In cases where the dead were not buried in Türkiye, the locations where they lost their lives were still marked.
Historical illustrations reach back into the Ottoman period, including soldiers in Yemen and India and Ottoman cavalry. The Trans-Siberian Railway is also depicted to represent Ottoman soldiers captured during World War I who were present along the route.
More sites could be added
The current total of 172 may grow as researchers identify burial sites that remain undocumented or whose precise locations have been lost.
Kalle cited the memoirs of İhsan Latif Pasha, one of the commanders associated with the Sarıkamış campaign, which refer to graves of Turkish soldiers in China's Manchurian region that have not yet been located. Newly verified sites can be incorporated into later versions of the map.
The General Directorate of Mapping offers the map as a free downloadable product in PDF format, with a JPG version also available.
Free download: Map of Turkish Military Cemeteries and Memorials Abroad
Sources: General Directorate of Mapping, Anadolu Agency, Bosphorus News review and reporting.