EVANGELICORUM COMMUNE COEMETERIUM

A Brief Guide to Istanbul’s Feriköy Protestant Cemetery

Brian Johnson and Richard Wittmann

The Feriköy Protestant Cemetery opened in 1859 on land granted by the Ottoman government to several contemporary leading Protestant nations, and since then it has served as the main burial place for Istanbul’s Protestant (and otherwise non-Catholic or Orthodox) foreign dead. Easy to miss in the surrounding beat of urban life, this small site in the heart of the city bears witness to the vital role that generations of Europeans and foreigners of other nationalities have played in the social and cultural life of Istanbul as well as the Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey.

Managed today by a governing board comprised of the diplomatic representatives of Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Sweden, Hungary, Switzerland, and the USA, the cemetery at Feriköy is an active burial ground, historic landmark, and one of the last green spots in Istanbul’s center. In 2018, a group of Turkey-based international scholars formed the Feriköy Protestant Cemetery Initiative to document and preserve it as a heritage site. To this end, the Initiative has created a brief online guide devoted to some of the cemetery’s most notable residents. The work is also dedicated to the many more lying beside them for whom there is no memorial.


First e-edition June 2020; first edition published March 2021 followed by Turkish and German editions.