|  Hungarian Minister of Education and Culture István Hiller and Turkish Minister of Culture and Tourism Ertugrul Günay on February 2, 2010 opened the Béla Bartók Museum in the city of Osmaniye, Turkey. The opening ceremony was attended by Bahaeddin Nakiboglu, the new honorary consul of Hungary in Gaziantep who also covers Osmaniye, as well as Governor of Osmaniye Province Celalettin Cerrah and Mayor Kadir Kara. At the opening ceremony Mr Hiller presented the state award given by President of the Republic László Sólyom, the “Order of Merit of the Republic of Hungary with Star (civilian)” to Culture and Tourism Minister Ertugrul Günay in acknowledgement of his efforts in preserving Hungarian cultural heritage in Turkey. The Mayor of Osmaniye presented a certificate of honorary citizenship awarded posthumously to Béla Bartók by the city council. The certificate was received by dr László Vikárius, head of the Bartók Archives of the Musicology Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, on behalf of Bartók’s legal heir.
 Addressing the guests of the opening ceremony, dr Éva Csáki, an expert on Turkish studies, talked about the early Turkish-Hungarian linguistic relationship. Musicologist dr János Sipos discussed Bartók’s research activities in Turkey, while ethnomusicologist dr Feza Tansug lectured on the reception of Bartók in Turkey. The curator, dr Klára Radnóti, historian-musicologist of the Hungarian National Museum, and dr Vikárius presented the collection of the Bartók Museum in Osmaniye to the participants. The Foreign Ministry has ardently supported the creation of the museum since 2004; it has extended financial support for nurturing Bartók’s Turkish following on several occasions as well as having prepared a part of the museum’s exhibition material in collaboration with the Bartók Archives in 2006. The Foreign Ministry gave assistance for the establishment of the Museum’s audio and reference library which stores Bartók’s complete works on CD as well as literature on the great composer’s life and research. In addition, a DVD is being prepared with the help of the Foreign Ministry and contributions from renowned researchers, presenting Bartók’s studies on Turkey to a wider audience on a high standard of scholarship. Béla Bartók collected folk songs in the south-east Turkish city of Osmaniye and its environs in 1936, accompanied by Turkish composer and musicologist Ahmet Adnan Saygun. The city honours Bartók’s memory to this day. As a token of its appreciation, the city council offered an honorary citizenship to the Hungarian composer posthumously in 2004 and at the same time initiated establishment of the permanent Béla Bartók exhibition and museum in the city.
 The newly opened exhibition guides visitors through the route and events leading up to Bartók’s research in Anatolia and its results. In addition to the photographs and document replicas presented, visitors can listen to Bartók’s recordings made in Osmaniye and its surroundings, as well as a programme broadcast on Hungarian Radio in 1937 on his travels in Turkey. The Hungarian heritage sites in Turkey, such as the Rákóczi Museum in Tekirdag, the Kossuth Museum in Kütahya and the Thököly House in Kocaeli contribute significantly to deepening Hungarian-Turkish cultural ties while paying long-lasting tribute to the person to whom they are dedicated. The Béla Bartók Museum in Osmaniye is the fourth Hungarian national heritage site; its importance is heightened by the fact that it is the only one of its kind in the region east of Ankara.
February 2, 2010) |