Bodrum completes 22-year oral history and digital archive project

The Bodrum Municipality Oral History Working Group has completed a 22-year project to document the social and cultural history of Bodrum, Turkey. Initiated in 2003, the massive undertaking has resulted in a comprehensive urban memory archive consisting of 36,000 hours of audio and video recordings, alongside 15,000 photographs.

The project features the testimonies of 600 residents, capturing a wide array of historical and cultural topics. These include maritime professions such as sponge diving, seafaring, and boat building, as well as local cuisine, neighborhood life, family stories, traditional crafts, and the historical dynamics of Turkish-Greek relations and population exchanges.

To mark the completion of the project, the municipality held a launch event for the book ‘Sözler, Yüzler, İzler: Bodrum’ (Words, Faces, Traces: Bodrum) and a 15-part documentary series. Bodrum Mayor Tamer Mandalinci emphasized the importance of the archive in preserving the city's identity, stating that understanding Bodrum is best achieved by listening to the stories of those who have lived on its lands.