Nomads

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<h5>When these photographs were taken between the 1960s and 1980s, many nomads were still travelling through Turkey with their herds, practising nomadic or semi-nomadic pastoralism. The Yörük people in the west of the country are nomads of Turkish origin, most of whom have now settled down; in eastern Anatolia, Kurdish nomads, the Koçer, travel over shorter or longer distances. Both groups are fighting for recognition as guardians of a millennia-old pastoral culture.</h5>The photograph shows a nomadic Yörük woman walking along a main road in the Konya region with her camels. Her clothing and shoes are traditional, with the short jacket featuring a colourful floral pattern and the wide-cut skirt with a belt and large buckle particularly striking.

“I come from a Yörük family and I firmly believe that anyone with Yörük blood in their veins cannot spend their whole life in the same place. After a while, you feel the need to move on and develop a strong desire to change your place of residence, neighbourhood, town or even country.” (Mehmet Tütüncü, 43)“Camels are such beautiful and impressive animals! My grandmother told me that her grandfather owned some in Konya and was very wealthy. I wonder if his camels looked as magnificent as these ones?” (anonymous)

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Many Yörüks use their camels as an attraction and let tourists ride them, particularly on the beaches in the Antalya region.

“I think I was only three or four when they put me and my sister on a camel like that. When the animal stood up, it seemed so huge to me that I cried with fear; I still remember how my brother quickly picked me up. Even though I love camels now, I’m still a bit scared of them.” (anonymous)

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Kurdish nomadic women and children (Koçer) by their black goat-hair tents south of Bitlis – on a much-travelled route leading to the summer pastures around Lake Van.

“The women don’t seem to be paying attention to the photographer. Was the photo taken surreptitiously? Where are the women looking? What’s happening in the tent?” (anonymous)

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Black goat-hair tents on wooden poles – a form of dwelling found throughout the Arab-Iranian world. This camp was set up somewhere in eastern Turkey for a few days or weeks.

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Early in the morning, Kurdish nomadic families set off somewhere in the summer pastures around Lake Van. Their ox-drawn carts have solid wooden spoked wheels.

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Left photo: Kurdish nomads travelling through the town of Bitlis in 1989 with their horses, donkeys and dogs laden with goods.Right photo: A Kurdish nomad with her household goods on a small horse in Bitlis.

Shepherds and flocks

Hidden architectural treasures

The image archive of the Museum for Islamic Art holds an exceptional collection of photographs of Turkey. The historical ties between the museum, Germany and Turkey provided the impetus to make these images accessible to a wider audience – for they belong not only in the archive. The subjects go far beyond historical sites and landscapes, reflecting everyday life in both urban and rural areas.We sought to engage with people with and without a Turkish family background and asked what associations and memories the images evoked. In autumn 2025, we displayed printed photographs at the Friday market on Berlin’s Maybachufer – unfortunately in the rain – as well as at the Brunnenviertel e.V. neighbourhood initiative. Both events met with great interest; some of the many comments can be read in this online exhibition.On display are photos from three collections: photographs by the German travellers Wolfgang Zorer (1889 -1939), Erhard Glitz (1904 -1969) and Josef Härle (1937 -2015), taken in Turkey between the 1920s and 2000s.

<h4>Josef Härle (1937 - 2015)&nbsp;</h4>Prof. Dr Josef Härle was a secondary school teacher, professor of geography and dean at the University of Education in Weingarten. Between the 1960s and the early 2000s, he travelled extensively throughout the Middle East, particularly Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Palestine and Oman. He organised specialist geography field trips with students, as well as his own research expeditions, which he undertook together with his wife. He travelled particularly extensively in the region of historic Mesopotamia whilst conducting extensive field research for the ‘Tübingen Atlas of the Middle East’ on the topic of land use. His travels focused on the cultural landscapes of the regions he visited – their origins, development and transformation – supplemented by visits to numerous historical sites. He was also actively involved in his home region of Upper Swabia: he initiated community projects and worked with school pupils and interested members of the public on active nature conservation. Obituaries highlighted his “inner ecological attitude”, which shaped his educational work just as much as his research. Josef Härle published geography textbooks and numerous specialist articles, and contributed the map ‘Mesopotamia: Land Use’ to the Tübingen Atlas of the Near East (TAVO). The collection of the Museum for Islamic Art now holds around 2,300 photographs from his estate, which his widow donated to the museum. The connection was established in 2015 during a slide show in Buxtehude, in which a Syrian member of staff from the museum’s Syrian Heritage Archive Project and his wife compared their photographic impressions of Buxtehude with photos from Damascus. Mrs Härle initially offered the Syriendias belonging to her late husband and later donated the entire collection of slides from the Middle East.<h4>Erhard Glitz (1904 - 1970)&nbsp;</h4>Erhard Glitz, born in 1904, decided at the age of 20 to pursue a military career in the artillery within the Reichswehr, which, under the Treaty of Versailles, was limited to an army of just 100,000 men. The severely restricted rearmament did not permit an air force, yet Erhard Glitz received pilot training. As part of a German-Chinese military cooperation under Chiang Kai-shek, Erhard Glitz lived in China with his family as a training officer between 1934 and 1936. After returning to Germany, Erhard Glitz served in the Luftwaffe, officially founded by Hitler in 1935 as part of the Wehrmacht; he was promoted to lieutenant colonel in 1942 and assigned to the XIII Air Corps. From February 1943 to August 1944, Glitz was a garrison commander in the Peloponnese. At the end of the Second World War, he lost an arm during fighting near Hildesheim. In 1947, he was questioned as a witness at the Nuremberg Trials regarding war crimes connected with fighting against Greek partisans. As he had not trained for a civilian profession and was interested in art history, he acquired the relevant knowledge through self-study and began working as a travelling lecturer – initially focusing primarily on the subject of China. Later, India, Ceylon and North Africa were added to his itinerary.&nbsp;Driven by his enthusiasm for Greek-Hellenistic culture, he travelled to Greece and Turkey and began taking photographs systematically. Among other things, Glitz gave slide lectures on his travels as part of the Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations. The earliest documented lecture dates from 26 April 1955 in Gelsenkirchen and was entitled ‘Wonders of Anatolia’; one of his final lectures took place in 1968 on the subject of ‘Turkey, a Land of Friends’. In order to be able to take photographs despite the absence of his right arm, Glitz used a standard tripod or a specially designed shoulder tripod. Thanks to a donation by his son Uwe Glitz, almost 10,000 photographs found their way into the image archive of the Museum of Islamic Art, of which over 6,500 depict Turkey. As the photographs are not dated, it is only known that they were taken in the 1950s and 1960s. (Any assistance with more precise dating – for example, based on details in the photos – is welcome.) Erhard Glitz travelled through Turkey with his wife, and although the focus was on sites and buildings of art-historical significance, his pictures reveal a keen interest in personal, human encounters.<h4>Wolfgang Zorer (1889 - 1939)&nbsp;</h4>Very little is known about Eduard Wolfgang Zorer (also incorrectly spelled ‘Zohrer’), who was born in 1889. He was a fighter pilot, squadron leader and captain during the First World War, during which he helped to develop military tactics of the time and was highly decorated. In 1917, he was taken prisoner of war and left the military in 1920. Later, Zorer stated that his civilian occupation was ‘representative for aviation’. In the 1920s and 1930s, the ‘Captain and Photographer’ Wolfgang Zorer apparently resided (continuously?) in Ankara. He was involved in the surveying and photographic documentation of the Temple of Augustus in Ankara. In 1927, he carried out architectural photography at St Clement’s Church in Ankara, procured ‘photographic records’ of historical sites in Anatolia, and took photographs himself. The DAI Istanbul photo archive contains a few photographs by him. On the internet, Wolfgang Zorer is also described as an ‘art collector’ and ‘art historian and archaeologist’. Zorer lost his life in the crash of a commercial aircraft in December 1939. A few months later, his collection of antique furniture, paintings, porcelain, carpets, etc. was auctioned at the Hans W. Lange auction house in Berlin. The approximately 190 photographs by Wolfgang Zorer originate from the estate of Ernst Herzfeld and were labelled by Kurt Erdmann (1958–1964), then director of the Museum for Islamic Art.

Nomads

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Eyes wide open