Library Contact
Turkish Studies
Library Resources in Turkish, Ottoman, Turkic Languages and Turkish Studies
Curated by Feyza Sayman ; maintained since January 2024 by Evyn Kropf
The University of Michigan Library's Turkish collection contains materials in Turkish, Ottoman Turkish, and various Turkic languages. The collection also includes many volumes in English and other Western languages on or related to Türkiye, Turks and Turkic peoples.
Our collection covers the geographic area made up by Türkiye, Southeastern Europe and the Balkan Peninsula, the Aegean Sea, the Eastern Mediterranean, the Middle East and North Africa, the Caucasus, the Volga-Ural Region (Russia), the Crimea (Ukraine), South Siberia (Russia), Central Asia and Xinjiang (China).
The Turkish collection is primarily housed in the Hatcher Graduate Library, but can be found in other libraries on campus: Fine Arts Library, Clements Library, Shapiro Library, Askwith Media Library, Art, Architecture and Engineering Library, Law Library, and Buhr Building.
Some Turkish and Turkic reference books (dictionaries, encyclopedias, bibliographies, etc.) are located in the 1 West Stacks of the Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library, but many can be found in the general stacks of the Graduate Library. Some reference titles related to Türkiye and Turks can also be found in the Government Information Collection. Clark Library Maps Collection includes many unique items relating to the geographic area. Special Collections Research Center holds part of the personal library of Sultan Abdülhamit the Second (34th Ottoman Sultan who reigned from 1876 to 1909) , with more than 500 books and manuscripts.
The materials in the above mentioned libraries can be located through the library catalog of the University of Michigan, Library Catalog Search
Traditional Turkish shadow play
Turkish:
Our modern Turkish collection is especially strong in the subject categories of history, politics and government, literature and language, dictionaries and reference works, economics, folklore, sociology, and fine arts. The materials in the collection are in many different formats: monographs, periodicals, newspapers, maps and microforms holdings, audio and video tapes, CD-ROM databases and texts. The collection also includes a growing number of web-based online electronic resources.
Turkish is an agglutinative language. It has a vowel harmony system. The basic word order of Turkish language is subject-object-verb. Turkish is a gender neutral language. Teach yourself Turkish / Turkish / Turkish grammar / Harfi harfine = letter-perfect / Turcology in Turkey / Türk dili üzerine incelemeler / Dünya dilleri ve Türkçe / Türk Dil Kurumu Sözlükleri
Ottoman Turkish:
The Ottoman Turkish collection contains manuscripts, lithographs, and about 1,500 printed volumes, including several of the earliest printed books and a large collection of Ottoman salnames in both original printed format and on microform. Microform and CD copies of newspapers, periodicals, and manuscripts are also available in the collection.
U-M library digitized manuscripts with Ottoman Turkish texts
Ottoman Turkish is an older form of Turkish that was used as a writing medium within the existence of the Ottoman Empire. Its vocabulary and grammar are based on Altaic Turkish, Semitic Arabic, and Indo-European Persian. It is written in Arabic script.
Osmanlıca dersleri / Osmanlı vesikalarını okumaya giriş / Osmanlı belgelerinin dili / Imperial Ottoman fermans / Siyakat yazısı / Arşiv belgelerinde siyakat yazısı özellikleri ve divan rakamları / Accounting method used by Ottomans for 500 years : stairs (merdiban) method / Osmanlı paleografyası ve Osmanlı diplomatikası / Tarih Boyunca Paleografya ve Diplomatik Semineri / Osmanlıca Sözlükler / LexiQamus
Turkic languages:
The Turkic collection includes more than 5,000 volumes in Azerbaijani, Turkmen, Uzbek, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Kazan Tatar, Crimean Tatar, Uighur, Yakut, etc. languages (in Cyrillic, Arabic, and Roman scripts). Newspapers in printed format or on microform, periodicals, audio and video tapes are also available in the collection.
Many of the Turkic languages are mutually intelligible. They exhibit the same grammatical structure of agglutination and vowel harmony.
Dictionary of the Turkic languages / Türk şiveleri̇ lügati / Türk lûgatı / Türk Dünyası gramer terimleri kılavuzu / Karşılaştırmalı Türk lehçeleri sözlüğü / Language, society, and religion in the world of the Turks / Gagauz edebiyatı / Türk lehçeleri üzerine denemeler / Türk lehçelerinin karşılaştırmalı dilbilgisi / Çağdaş Türk yazı dilleri
OYA
Traditional Turkish needlework
Turkish March/Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Fazıl Say
Sixteenth century Turkish tiles with carnation and tulip designs.
Turkic Languages
The Turkic languages, belonging to the Altaic language family, may be classified into four groupings linguistically and geographically:
- Northwestern (Kipchak) group: Bashkir, Crimean Tatar, Karachay-Balkar, Karaim, Karakalpak, Kazakh, Kazan Tatar, Kumyk, Nogai, Armeno-Kipchak.
- Northeastern (Siberian) group: Altai, Kyrgyz, Khakass, Shor, Tofa, Tuvanian, Yakut, Yellow Uighur, Soyot, Oirot, Chulym, Dolgan, Karagass.
- Southwestern (Oghuz) group: Azerbaijani, Gagauz, Turkish, Ottoman Turkish, Turkmen.
- Southeastern (Chagatai) group: Khorezmian Turkic, Salar, Uighur, Uzbek, Western Yugur.
-Bulgaro-Turkic: Chuvash
-Khalaj
-Old Turkic (Kök-Türk): Including the Yenesei and Orkhon inscriptions.
"The Turkic languages spoken farthest west are Turkish in Yugoslavia, Macedonia, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Cyprus; Gagauz in Moldova, Bulgaria; Crimean Tatar in Romania (Crimean Tatars no longer live in the Crimea, but only a small number of them was able to return to their homeland within recent years); Karaim and Krymchak in southeastern Lithuania, West-Ukraine, and the Crimea. The area of Turkish proper, which is spoken in the Republic of Turkey, stretches from the Balkan Peninsula to Iran. Azerbaijani is spoken in the Republic of Azerbaijan and Iran. Afshar, Qashqai, Shahseven-Khamse, Qajar, Bayat, Pishakchi, Quchani, Inanli, Karagozlu, Tekke, Yomut, Salir are some of the Turkic-speaking peoples in Iran. Khalaj is another Turkic language spoken in Iran and Afghanistan. Some Azerbaijani and Turkmen dialects are also spoken in northern Iraq, especially in Irbil, Mosul, Kirkuk. The other Turkic-speaking peoples in the northern Caucasus are the Karachays, Balkars, Kumyks, Nogais, Karapapaks, and the Turkmens of Stavropol. The Meskhetian (Ahiska) Turks of the northern Caucasus do not live there any longer (They have still not been able to return to their homeland). The Kazan Tatars, Bashkirs, Teptiars, and the Mishars are found in scattered settlements in the Middle Volga-Ural area. The Chuvashes are the second largest Turkic-speaking unit in the Middle Volga-Ural area. East of the Caspian Sea begins the most homogeneous area of Turkic languages: Kazakh, Karakalpak, Kyrgyz, Turkmen, Uzbek, and Uighur. Uighur, Yellow Uighur and Salar are spoken in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous region(China) and some other Chinese provinces. The Yakuts are the most remote Turkic-speaking group in northeastern Siberia. The Altais, Tuvanians, Khakasses, Shors, Tofas, and the Teleuts are Turkic-speaking peoples of south Siberia."