{"id":1895,"date":"2026-06-30T15:11:38","date_gmt":"2026-06-30T12:11:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nit-istanbul.net\/?p=1895"},"modified":"2026-06-30T15:11:40","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T12:11:40","slug":"tales-of-the-dead-the-ferikoy-protestant-cemetery-and-its-religious-and-cultural-heritage-in-contemporary-istanbul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nit-istanbul.net\/index.php\/2026\/06\/30\/tales-of-the-dead-the-ferikoy-protestant-cemetery-and-its-religious-and-cultural-heritage-in-contemporary-istanbul\/","title":{"rendered":"Tales of the Dead: the Ferik\u00f6y Protestant Cemetery and its religious and cultural heritage in contemporary Istanbul"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

by Niek Engelhart<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1859, the Ferik\u00f6y Protestant Cemetery opened on the borders of Istanbul. It became the new cemetery for the European and Protestant dead, as they had previously been buried at the Grand Champs des Morts, together with the European Catholic dead. The new cemetery was administered by seven Protestant consulates in Istanbul, namely: Prussia, Great Britain, the U.S., the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden, Denmark, and the consulate of the Hanseatic League. Yearly, the administration would rotate to the next consul, which still happens today. In the meantime, some 5.000 people have been buried at the Protestant Cemetery in Ferik\u00f6y, while Istanbul grew around the cemetery and quickly engulfed it in the municipality of \u015ei\u015fli.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Figure 1: Plan cadastral d’assurances. Ferikeuy. [Ferik\u00f6y] No: 8. 1925, https:\/\/archives.saltresearch.org\/handle\/123456789\/118028<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

During the past couple of months, I had the privilege of conducting research on the cemetery as the intern at the NIT. Although my internship mainly encompassed the writing of a new visitor\u2019s guide to the Dutch section at the cemetery, my research led me to all the different sections of the cemetery and the many stories that come with it. In large part, this had to do with the several visits I made to the cemetery. During those visits, I tried to see the cemetery as a site on the intersection between the Ottoman Empire and the European or Protestant empires.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

History of the Cemetery<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Figure 2<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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When the location was bestowed on the seven consulates in 1853, on the condition that the Christian graves on the Grand Champ des Morts near Pera would be exhumed in the following three years. Diplomatic cooperation, however, did not turn out to be as quick as the Sultan desired. First, the original location turned out not to be big enough for both the Catholic and the Protestant dead. After a new location was offered, just across the road, the actual construction of the site took some time and some resourcefulness. For example, the consuls had to agree on the division of the costs of the construction and upkeep of the cemetery. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

When the Prussian consul decided to consecrate the cemetery within the Lutheran Church, and to place a sign above the gates in German, the other consuls protested and refused to pay their share. In an attempt to prevent some of the discussions, the Dutch consul at the time proposed to divide the cemetery not on basis of nationality, but on religious affiliation; a Lutheran, an Anglican, and a Reformed section.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1864 the graves of the old cemetery were still not transferred to Ferik\u00f6y. An example of the slow process can be found in the government of the Netherlands, who only transferred the necessary funds to the Dutch consulate after it was confirmed that the British and Prussian consuls had received the funds and the same story goes for the United States. As such, the Dutch graves of the old cemetery were not transferred to the Dutch section, with the exception of those graves that belonged to prominent members of the Levantine community, who paid for the transfer themselves, and the graves of the Warner brothers. The other graves were exhumed and the remains transferred to the Dutch monument, which stands in the middle of the Dutch section. The brother Levinus and Frederik Warner were transferred to the British section and were placed on the Monument Row<\/em>, where their headstones still stand. These brothers were both scholars of the Ottoman Empire, merchants, and were part of the Dutch diplomatic mission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Figure 3: the headstones of Frederik and Levinus Warner<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Contemporary Heritage<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the headstones of the Warner brothers, the history of the cemetery can be traced back to the seventeenth century. At the same time, the cemetery is still in used today, with around ten new burials each year. Therefore, the cemetery is in ongoing development. It is a site that fits perfectly well in the biggest clich\u00e9 of Istanbul; on the border between Europe and Asia, between the West and the Orient. The cemetery is a monument to this border, where the consuls, merchants, civil servants in the Ottoman Public Debt Administration are laid to rest next to citizens of Istanbul in modern times, who converted to Protestantism or were married to Europeans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This intersection of cultures is also visible in the funerary art. On newer tombstones flags of double nationality, such as the Turkish and Norwegian flags can be found, while older tombstones refer to a past time, such as the Ottoman-styled grave in the German section. Because the cemetery is not administered by a church, but rather by the consulates, there is a religious diversity as well. Lutheran crosses alternate with elaborate funerary monuments depicting angels or mourning figures, while the chapel is built in Anglican style.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During one of my last weekends, I found the occasion to visit the cemetery with some Turkish friends. With them, I got to focus on the cultural diversity of the contemporary cemetery. We looked, for example, at the big Turkish-styled tombs, where on one occasion we found a grave for a Christian-Muslim couple. The cemetery shows therefore how the international community is now included within Istanbul\u2019s society. It is no longer isolated from the rest of the city, built at its borders. Rather, it is now integrated within the ever-expanding city, and it is my hope that this integration will develop in the future, thereby becoming an example of Istanbul\u2019s diverse religious and cultural heritage.<\/p>\n\n\n

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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Niek Engelhart Introduction In 1859, the Ferik\u00f6y Protestant Cemetery opened on the borders of Istanbul. It became the new cemetery for the European and Protestant dead, as they had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1897,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[17,202,81,193,203,8,53],"class_list":["post-1895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog-posts","tag-cultural-heritage","tag-dutch-levantine","tag-dutch-turkish-relations","tag-ferikoy-protestant-cemetery","tag-internship","tag-istanbul","tag-ottoman"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/nit-istanbul.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/image-1.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nit-istanbul.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nit-istanbul.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nit-istanbul.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nit-istanbul.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nit-istanbul.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1895"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/nit-istanbul.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1895\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1903,"href":"https:\/\/nit-istanbul.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1895\/revisions\/1903"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nit-istanbul.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nit-istanbul.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nit-istanbul.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nit-istanbul.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}