Arabic Inscribed Turkish WW1 Officer Photo-- Wearing German Style Ribbon Bar

[McCulloh]

Bob:
I am in the process of translating Meterin's book-with the help of a friendly Kurdish paralegal.
When you are in Constantinople I reccommend you look him up. My dream is to rifle through the award lists in the archives.

[Bob Lembke]

Istanbul Research

McCulloh:

I am not sure what or who Meterin is or what his book is.

Are you recommending that I look up the Kurdish paralegal or Meterin? I am very open to something like that, have had very nice personal encounters there. I plan to write a book about my father, specifically, beyond my current Flammenwerfer book, and my weakest part of his story was the Turkish phase. It would be good to have a Militaria contact or researcher over there.

I visited Constantinople twice, and visited the museum both times, and both days the Military Library was closed; it's open about 3-4 days a week. I wrote them a letter about possible research there, and never got a response. In general the Turks and Germans were good allies, generally helped each other, but the Turks then, and possibly now, had a bit of a problem with the Germans to some extent guiding if not running their army, and it is not a topic that they are really warm to, possibly. (Generalizing horribly, here!) A retired American colonel wrote a good book about the Turkish Army, he was stationed there, and a big help was that a good buddy was later the Turkish Chief of Staff, affording him lots of cooperation. We e-mailed and he said that the Turks (again generalizing) are not specifically interested in their history, so it may be that they will not cooperate getting you information, they may not have it at all. Although there must be people interested in their wonderful history.

"My dream is to rifle through the award lists in the archives." Lets hope that they are there.

Early in this thread a member was mentioned, that by the context might be Turkish.

Let me know if I can do something for you over there. I will be there for a longer visit, and I will be with an old buddy, a former Army officer, not a "spousal unit", which also is nice but who might not have as much patience while one chases Militaria pixies through the Grand Bazaar.

Bob

[McCulloh]

Meterin is the author of the turkish medals book mentioned above. Yes, the medal awrds are all still there-in huge, uncatagorized piles. Just waiting to be looked through.
I'll pm you more infor tomorrow.

[TerryG]

The signature is the thrid line of text. Arabic signatures I find virtually unintelligible, although it doesn't appear to start with an N or a T, so Said is more likely. As for the first two lines of text, I can identify maybe half the individual letters, but not enough to tell if it's names or words. One of the words looks like fistik, which means pistachio.

Dave

I am told that the signature reads "Roustom Mostafa Mohamed" and then a date like 9??1335?? although not clear.
I get this info from a contact in Egypt.