Newsletter No. 490
News-Analysis
January 22, 2007

 

A REPORT ON THE ERTUGRUL PROJECT IN KUSHIMOTO

This past weekend I traveled up to Kushimoto Town, Wakayama Prefecture, to see firsthand what this new Ertugrul project is all about, which I introduced earlier this month in Shingetsu Newsletter No. 477. I received a fine welcome from the project leader, Mr. Tufan Turanli, and the main members of his team, who are staying at a large hotel in Kushimoto until the 25th.

As mentioned before, the main institution that is involved is the Institute of Nautical Archaeology in Bodrum, Turkey; but I also discovered that many of the key members also have links with Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas. (Although they are Aggies and I am a Longhorn, we somehow got along just fine.)

The members of their team actually come from four countries: Turkey, Japan, the United States, and Spain. From what I could gather, they are a world-renowned team of underwater archaeologists who have some major discoveries to their credit. Just from the short time that I visited with them, it was fully apparent that these were sharp guys and gals.

Very well, but as you know I was skeptical that they would find much after 116 years. Certainly, the idea of “raising the Ertugrul” sounded pretty far fetched. So what was going on here?

It turns out that they were well aware that the Ertugrul would not be raised, but they are hoping to find major metal pieces of the ship like the engine or boilers, which they can later bring to the surface and place in the Ertugrul museum in Kushimoto. As one of the team members put it: “We want to make the museum much better.”

As of Sunday, they had not had any luck finding any major pieces of the ship, but they were having some successes, since they found on the sea floor a large metal pot used in the Ertugrul’s kitchen, two rifles, and a lot of ammunition. They were expecting to find more as time went on.

The project is ambitious. They expect to continue to work on salvaging the Ertugrul for three more years in preparation for the 120th anniversary commemoration of the Ertugrul tragedy. Mr. Turanli told me that this project was not really “serious archaeology” like some of the other projects he has worked on, but that his commitment to it sprung more from the desire to revive the memory of the Ertugrul, and the role that it played in establishing the modern relationship between Japan and Turkey. In that respect, the project is already turning into a success: Both the Turkish and Japanese media are writing articles and making TV broadcasts in connection with this affair, and the journalists seem interested enough that more stories will be forthcoming.

All in all, I wish these people success in their endeavors. Their project is very close to my own heart, and there is even likely to be some kind of academic collaboration between them and me in the future. What they are doing will serve to flesh out the facts of the Ertugrul story more clearly than before, and that deserves to be supported.