türkçe links to original Turkish article
(Hürriyet Newspaper, 22 December 2023)
Ahmet İzzet Bengüboz is the one wearing a tie, standing
about sixth from the right side.
The most critical matter in the current Hamas-Israel negotiations is the
hostage prisoners in Gaza. There has so far been no photograph
published of these prisoners to the outside world. However, a
photograph of Turkish prisoners in an English POW camp in Egypt more
than 100 years ago has emerged from the town of Mudurnu in Bolu
province. The photo is part of a story that goes from Mudurnu to Gaza
and on to Egypt.
Ahmet İzzet Bengüboz was born in Mudurnu, which was then a town
within the Ottoman provincial subdivision of Bolu, in 1896. When WWI
broke out he was a high school student but he left school at age 18 and
became a "reserve officer cadet" in the Ottoman Army. After training,
he went to the Caucasus Front, where he was a team commander fighting
against the Russians.
In 1916 he returned to Istanbul and was reassigned two months later to
the Palestine-Sinai Front and he participated in the Ottoman Army's
second attack on the Suez Canal. Subsequently, he was withdrawn to
Gaza, where he fought against the English and at the end of the Third
Battle of Gaza he was taken prisoner by the English when they entered
Gaza.
Along with the other Turkish prisoners, Bengüboz was brought to an
English POW camp near Alexandria, Egypt, called Seydibeşir POW
Camp, where he stayed in barracks for POW officers, which were a
bit better than those for regular POW soldiers. Bengüboz was very
active in the camp and began to learn English, too. Photographs of the
POWs were being taken and this interested Bengüboz quite a bit so he
learned about photography from the English
After 30 months in captivity, Bengüboz was set free on 3 May 1920
and he returned to Mudurnu, where he joined the Turkish War of
Independence. He had brought photographs with him from the POW
camp in Egypt and this interest of his continued during the Independence
War, as he took pictures with a camera he was able to acquire by his own
means. After the war, he worked as a teacher for a while and then as an
official in a census office.
His photography interest continued and he took thousands of pictures of
holidays and daily life, portraits and landscapes. He even took a picture
of Kara Fatma, one of the symbolic women heroes of the Independence
War. His grandchildren preserved these photos' "cam baskı" (glass plate
print) negatives of the "cam baskı" originals for years. Bengüboz's
grandson Mehmet Bengüboz gave these films to the Peoples Education
Directorate in the 1980s but this treasure trove of negatives didn't gain
recognition until years later.
This is how the photograph of Bengüboz and other Turkish officer POWs
who were captured in Gaza and incarcerated in Seydibeşir POW Camp
was discovered. Along with thousands of photographs that serve as
historical and cultural documents, this photograph has been preserved
within the scope of the project: "A 100-Year Heritage: Bengüboz".
Bengüboz's grandson Mehmet Bengüboz told Hürriyet that "these photos
are in glass plate form. At that time there was no film, just glass plates.
I gave them to the Directorate so they won't be damaged and they are all
now being safeguarded. There has been an exhibition, too. My granddad
didn't talk much about those days but once in a while he would get the
neighbors together and tell them stories. He was taken prisoner in Gaza
and they took him to Egypt. He talked about the desert, the heat, and the
aggravations in the camp, where he learned about photography. He died
in 1969."
