Bulgaristan’a Satılan Evrak ve Özel Arşivlerin Ülke Tarihindeki Önemi

There is consensus in Turkey that the archiving studies started in the second half of the XIXth century. The historical signs of these studies go back to beginning of the XVth century. It is seen that there is necessity for modern archiving since the documents preserved in sealed sacks and chests in rolls has died out because of negligence and bad conditions. These studies had been continued only with a view to preservation-protection with various attempts until the declaration of Turkish Republic. In this period; the most important attempt in Turkish archiving was founding Hazine-i Evrak in 1846 and collecting the governmental documents there. In Turkish Republic period; the Turkish National Assembly protected the documents of Bab-ı Ali Hazine-i Evrakı, important ministries and institutions after the abolition of Ottoman Sultanate on November 1, 1922. On March 1, 1923, “Mahzen-i Evrak Mümeyyizliği”, which was attached to the Office of the Executive Assistant of Turkish National Assembly Cabinet of Government Ministers, was founded. This situation formed the core of today’s General Directorate of State Archives. The documents taken over from the Ottoman Empire and the documents produced by the institutions of Turkish Republic had been passed through various cleaning and destruction methods until 1931. The most important one of this is; the sale of nearly 1,5 million documents, most of which belonging to the Ministry of Finance, 30-50 tons in weight, to Bulgaria in May 1931 and the developments after this event. This event was experienced due to “negligence and indifference” and “deficiency of regulations” which had caused loss of many documents before. After this distressing event, legal precautions for not destructing of the state documents were taken, but the private archives were not included in the frame of these precautions. In order not to experience such events, controlling important – unimportant governmental documents of private persons and institutions and taking necessary legal precautions for using them against to the government are necessary. In this study, suggestions about these precautions will be presented and evaluations on the subject will be made