The Last Century in Turkish-Polish Relations (1923-2023)
The Inventory of the Galician Martyrdoms of the Ottoman XV Corps for the Years 1916-1917 made by the Polish State in 1921
In November 1920, the Representation of the Polish Government at the Sublime Porte informed the Political Depart, ment of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Warsaw that action needed to be taken to determine the burial sites and identity of soldiers of Polish nationality who had been killed or had died in the Ottoman Empire. As a gesture of good will, the Poles had already handed over to the Turkish authorities death certificates and inheritance documents of Ottoman soldiers who had died on Polish soil, a gesture which – as noted by the then Undersecretary of State in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Raşid Bey – "deeply moved both the Ottoman government and the families of the deceased". The conduct of the Polish authorities was interpreted as a testimony to the "delicacy of feeling of the Polish Government". Probably following the above arrangements, and parallel to similar activities carried out in Türkiye (the details of which, unfortunately, we do not know), an inventory of the graves of Turkish soldiers who were killed or died on Polish soil in the years 1914,1918 was made in 1921, on the order of the Section of Non,Catholic Religions and Care for War Graves of the Ministry of Military Affairs of the Republic of Poland. The lists drawn up by local branches of the Office for the Maintenance of War Graves covered, with only a few exceptions, soldiers of the Ottoman XV Corps, which in the years 1916,1917 fought on the East,Galician front. In today's Polish territory, these were the graves of 24 officers and privates with established identities, buried in seven cemeteries. In the case of the current territories of western Ukraine (which belonged to Poland during the interwar years), a total of 876 identified burials and 122 nameless burials located in 13 cemeteries were added to the lists.
