Retired Ambassador Bilal Şimşir, known for his several key duties in the Foreign Ministry and his noteworthy role in the Turkish academy as a historian and writer, has passed away at the age of 90 in the capital Ankara.
Mavi Boncuk |
( b. Osmanpazarı, Bulgaria 1933 -d. Ankara, Turkiye November 20, 2023 )
Born in Osmanpazarı, Bulgaria to a Turkish family in 1933, Şimşir and his family immigrated to Gelibolu, Turkey because of the pressure and repression applied to the Turkish community in Bulgaria after the Second World War. As a result, Şimşir completed his high school education in Çanakkale before moving to Ankara to study at the Ankara University’s prestigious Faculty of the Political Sciences, which he finished in 1957, and started working as an assistant at the same faculty’s diplomatic history chair. In 1960, he joined the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and represented his country as a diplomat for the next 38 years, serving as Turkish ambassador in important such as Tirana, Beijing, and Canberra.
During his time as a diplomat his contributions were also numerous, including his efforts to have the Turkish embassies and consulates acquire premises rather than stay on rent. In addition, he also made efforts to reduce the embassies’ and consulates’ reliance and dependency on foreign personnel and train staff from Turkey despite the limited personnel cadre available to the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs back in the 1960s and ‘70s.
Şimşir’s work and success were not without difficulties. During his active service especially from the 1960s to ‘80s, the Turkish diplomats were the target of a heinous terrorist campaign launched by Armenian extremists, principally the Dashnaktsutyun and ASALA. Şimşir, in his double capacity as a Turkish diplomat and a historian, was a prime target for the Armenian terrorists. Fortunately for Turkey, Şimşir survived those troubled times and managed to continue serving his country both as a diplomat and a historian with distinction.
The video-interview published by the Turkish Historical Society has also included one great news for the Turkish historians, namely that Şimşir has written his memoirs as a diplomat and they may one day be published. Knowing as much as we do about Şimşir’s life, there can ne doubt that the memoirs he has written will be of great value to historians and international relations pundits.
In addition to his distinguished career as a diplomat, Şimşir would certainly count among the doyens of Turkish historians and certainly one of the most prolific ones. To date, he has written and edited more than 90 books covering a wide variety of subjects related to the Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey, and the Turkish minorities in the Balkans. The number of scholarly articles he has authored reaches up to 250.
In fact, Şimşir introduced the publication of document collections to the Turkish historical tradition. While there may have been rare cases of publication of documents, none had been as extensive, thorough, and systematic as those published by Şimşir. As a diplomat serving abroad and historian at heart, Şimşir never failed to collect documents and material that he could gather in the countries he visited and lived. In practice, he lived a life with two professions without ever neglecting either one. He was a diplomat serving and representing his country by the day; a historian tirelessly writing, editing books and articles by the night. His ability to speak and read half a dozen languages also served him well since it was and is a rare gift among historians.
The result of his work as a historian has an invaluable and unparalleled amount of foreign archival materials published and presented for the use of the Turkish historians and public. To the date, hundreds of historians and other scholars and thousands of books and articles have used his books and articles as points of reference, which attest to the unique value of Şimşir’s works. His works cover a broad range of topics such as the Turkish emigrations from the Balkans, the Aegean Question, the Kurdish Question, the Armenian Question, and the Treaty of Lausanne. In addition to foreign archival materials, Şimşir had also collected and published a very significant number of Ottoman and republican-era Turkish documents on a wide range of topics, once again doing an invaluable service to the Turkish academia and public.
The Turkish Historical Society expressed its condolences in a written statement on Nov. 20, stating,
“Regrettably, we received the somber news of the passing of our esteemed honorary member Bilal Şimşir, a valuable ambassador, guiding young diplomats with his wealth of experience, a prolific writer and a significant contributor to our archives.”
The Atatürk Research Center Presidency also conveyed their sorrow at the loss of the “esteemed author and retired ambassador, who shed light on recent Turkish history and the history of Turkish diplomacy with his written works.”
Having graduated from Ankara University’s International Relations Department in 1957, Şimşir began his career as an assistant to Professor Dr. Ahmet Şükrü Esmer in the Diplomacy History Chair at the same faculty. He joined the Foreign Ministry in 1960.
Şimşir served at the Turkish Embassies in Paris, Damascus, London and The Hague, holding positions such as chief clerk and undersecretary. He also assumed several roles, such as branch director, department head, deputy director-general and director-general in the ministry.
Representing Türkiye as an ambassador, he held posts at the embassies in Tirana and Beijing, as well as in Australia and the South Pacific countries. After 38 years of dedicated service, Şimşir retired in 1998.
His life, marked by contributions to recent history through 52 volumes of research books and approximately 160 articles, was featured in the Turkish Historical Society's “Living History” documentary series.
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