[PHOTOGRAPH / RUSSIAN - OTTOMAN RELATIONS] Prisoner Exchange Congress held with Russian officials in Copenhagen

VERDENOGVI (Photographer?), [1917].

Original large silver gelatine photograph. Mounted on the original cardboard of “Verdenogvi”. Photo size: 24x16 cm; cardboard size: 26x21 cm. Written brief description on verso in pen & pencil, and upper right of the photograph in pencil, wear to extremities. In very good condition.

Excessively rare original silver gelatine mounted on photographer’s original cardboard of the “Üserâ Mübâdelesi Kongresi” [i.e., Prisoner Exchange Congress] held with Russian officials in Copenhagen in 1917. The photograph shows around 35-40 delegates of Russia and the Ottoman Empire.

Yusuf Akçura (1876-1935), who was first in Scandinavia for three months for political negotiations within the scope of the Russian and Ottoman Prisoners of War Exchange during the First World War in 1917, later went to Russia, to send back around 60,000 Turkish prisoners of war, according to the estimates of the Ottoman Ministry of War, to the Ottoman land by determining the situation of these prisoners and taking them most healthily. Akçura prepared a report and then presented it to Hilâl-i Ahmer [i.e., Red Crescent] in 1918. According to his report, around 40000 Turkish prisoners of war could be determined in Russia, Ukraine, and North Caucasia. Akçura couldn’t go to Siberia although he could go to make observations in the cities and areas such as Moscow, Kostroma, Nizhny Novgorod, Samara, Kazan, Simbirsk, and Ufa.