Heybeliada Naval Academy and It's Place in the History of Turkish Education

Abstract

The Ottoman Empire had felt the need to keep up with the West due to its military defeats. For this purpose, engineering schools which were in the form of European-style educational institutions had been established in order to raise qualified crew for the army and the navy. Mühendishane-i Bahri-i Hümayun which was established after the Çeşme disaster, in the year of 1770, had constituted the first of these attempts. However, they could not get the desired benefit from it for a long period of time. The importance was given to maritime training is not limited to this in the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire had tried to fulfill the need for qualified crew by allowing the foundation of private naval academies. After the reign of Sultan Selim III, Mühendishane-i Bahri-i Hümayun had almost been forgotten until the 1830s. Sultan Mahmut II and especially the Tanzimat period affected the Naval Academy, as it affected many other fields, and led to some innovations in the academy. They started to intervene in the academy in the 1830s and went into actions that could make it possible to relocate the academy to Heybeliada until 1851. As a result of this, the academy was relocated to a new building in Heybeliada, and it attained renewed and more systematic education in 1848. The memorandum which was prepared by Patrona Mustafa Pasha, the minister of the academy, in 1848 is a turning point in the history of the academy for the education to proceed. In this study, it is aimed to refer to the changes and transformations that Heybeliada Naval Academy has undergone in the historical process in the light of archival documents and primary sources.