Abstract:

Hüseyin Orak who was one of the important businessmen of Ankara, sent his children for the country tour in 1936. In that duration, while Orak couldn’t find the Turkey’s guide book for his children’s journey, the idea of an opus, (Guide of Turkey) was born. The project of Türkiye Kılavuzu had been implemented after the World War II, but it costed a great fortune. The project of Orak, unfortunately, had not aroused an expected interest, although he had sent teams all over the country by giving the allowances and covering the expenses. Orak, who started out with the idea of a social responsibility, could published only the first volume of Türkiye Kılavuzu despite of a great deal of effort, time and expenses. Turkey’s fourteen cities individually studied in this volume, there were miscellaneous information related to these. This book is the basic and important resource for the researchers who work on city history, local culture and social structures. For example, 1940’s Burdur, one of these cities, were introduced in the context of social, historical, economical, cultural and especially excursionary view in Türkiye Kılavuzu. In this paper, Türkiye Kılavuzu which is a rare book nowadays and its Burdur section will be examined with the story of finding of Türkiye Kılavuzu by authors of this article. In addition, this paper will reveal the formation of an opus as the first tourism and publicity guide of Turkey which actually could be seen the first social responsibility project of Turkey.

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