Unboxing/Unpacking a personal history

I am feeling strong doses of nostalgia after taking my personal belongings from my parents’ storage place. Like many families in İstanbul, my parents finally decided to move away from their apartments because of the expected major earthquake. Istanbul is in a frenzy of urban renewal, and the building they lived in for 45 years will be demolished and rebuilt soon. It took a long time to persuade my mother, but she is now ready to move to a new place for two years until the old building is rebuilt. All apartment holders in the building interviewed 15 contractors in 3 months and finally decided to work with one of them. I was surprised to see the kind of professionalism. Contractors had presentations and tried to persuade the owners during this process.

I hope the renewal process will go smoothly and my mother will like her new place. In the meantime, I am collecting back my books and other belongings that remained boxed for more than a decade at my parents’ house. I hereby create a new category, “Unboxing,” and will briefly discuss what I got from those boxes. A look at my personal history, which now spans 50 years, and I feel a little bit old. However, I am generally happy, and feeling old does not imply negative connotations. I made peace with my past, and it is time to discuss it.

This narration will be non-linear, as there was no chronological order while we were boxing them. Thanks to Dad, he swiftly packed whatever he could find when I started the mandatory military service and left my rented apartment in 2009. From 2004 to 2009, I could shelf all my books and belongings for the first and last time. Since then, I have been hoping to buy a house to resettle. Still, some stuff will come out!

Sometimes, between 1984 and 1987

I found clippings of foreign press visuals in one of the volumes of Encyclopædia Britannica. I would later begin to collect local newspapers, and as a child, I was fascinated with different templates, typographies, and designs of news outlets. I know that I had other clippings, but most are gone as Mum found that very childish (!) and threw them away. In fact, a huge collection of children’s magazines are gone for sure.

1986-1990

Speaking of Brittanica, it was released in Turkish as AnaBritannica in 1986, when I was 10 years old. It was published weekly as fascicles and lasted 4 years. I was so excited about this encyclopedia and dreamed of reading it after the first fascicle was released. I had already collected other Encyclopedias, which I will talk about. However, my father had other plans. This encyclopedia was more expensive, and he told me he would buy it as volume by volume. Well, he was a busy man and he did not follow the volume publications schedule. Belatedly, he brought volumes. I believe these are the only volumes I could have. Still, I would be so excited when he brought one and I would spend days with that.

The blue volumes in the picture are samples of İnönü Türk Ansiklopedisi, which was published in the 1940s. I probably bought them from second-hand bookstores when I was an undergraduate student with little pocket money I had.

Look at the quality and creativity. Inside the encyclopedia, you could find maps that could be used separately. There were also image pages published on better-quality paper.

İnönü Ansiklopedisi was first published in 1943. The publication process began with the release of the first fascicle in 1943. Here are some key details about its publication:

– The first volume was published in 1946.
– The second volume was published in 1947.
– The third volume was published in 1949.
– The fourth volume was published in 1950.

These initial four volumes were published under the name “İnönü Ansiklopedisi”. After the Democratic Party came to power in 1951, the name of the encyclopedia was changed to “Türk Ansiklopedisi” starting from the fifth volume[1][3].

The publication of the encyclopedia continued until 1984, when it was finally completed with a total of 33 volumes[1][3]. Due to its lengthy publication period of 41 years, it was sometimes referred to as the “Yorgun Ansiklopedi” (Tired Encyclopedia)[1].

Citations:

 

1. Türk Ansiklopedisi – Vikipedi
2. İnönü Ansiklopedisi Türk Ansiklopedisi 1946-1960 (Cilt 1-10) İlk Baskı – Nadir Kitap
3. Türk Ansiklopedisi – İslam Ansiklopedisi
4. İnönü Ansiklopedisi Türk Ansiklopedisi 1946-1984 (İlk 33 Cilt) – Nadir Kitap
5. Türkiye’de Ansiklopedi – Vikipedi
6. İnönü Ansiklopedisi – Sanat Kitabevi
7. İnönü Ansiklopedisi Türk Ansiklopedisi 1946-1972 (İlk 20 Cilt) – Kitantik
8. İnönü Ansiklopedisi Cilt IV Fasikül 27 – Kitantik
9. İsmet Paşa (İnönü) (1884-1973) – Atatürk Ansiklopedisi
10. İnönü Ansiklopedisi – Ekşi Sözlük

1991-1994

I wasted my high school years (!) reading Islamic/Islamist literature (in addition to other readings, of course). In this box, I think there is an ideological tension. Mawdudi’s Tafhim-ul-Quran is an ideological handbook for Sunni revivalism, but the other books align with a more Jamal al-Din al-Afghani style reformism. I would gradually move to a more reformist/Islamic socialism.

Oh, some of the packed stuff just received: