We are pleased to announce that the City of Vienna has approved funding for our ongoing project to digitise the Armeno-Turkish holdings of the Mekhitarist Congregation in Vienna. In addition to the Armeno-Turkish newspapers and journals, a substantial number of manuscripts and books will be digitised in the coming months. The digitised texts will be accessible on the Mehitarist Congregation Library website. Furthermore, a selection of newspapers and books will be transcribed in Latin script and made available via the platform Transkribus.

The project's objective is to meticulously catalogue and digitise the distinctive corpus of Armeno-Turkish texts, specifically referring to Turkish media written in Armenian script, from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the library of the Vienna Mechitarist Congregation for the first time and ensure their enduring accessibility to a broader audience.

The digitised Armeno-Turkish texts (mainly prints and newspapers) will be transcribed from Armenian script into Latin script using the AI-supported platform Transkribus. This will facilitate greater accessibility and comprehension of this cultural heritage.

The project thus has several objectives. 1) It is dedicated in an innovative way to an Armeno-Turkish corpus that, despite its historical significance, has long been unrecognised; 2) The integration of these texts and findings into academic research and teaching will promote a more comprehensive and multi-layered understanding of Ottoman history and Ottoman cultural heritage in Vienna; 3) The long-term goal of the project is to promote a paradigm shift in Turkish studies and to move away from narrow nationalist approaches. This shift is crucial for a more comprehensive and inclusive account of the complex history of the Ottoman Empire.

 Finally, the project aims to present the Mechitarist Congregation, which has been based in Vienna since 1811, as a place where the history of the Armenians, the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires converge in many ways, thus contributing to the cultural heritage of Vienna.

This project is being carried out in collaboration with