WDEC 2025 in Istanbul

The Feriköy Protestant Cemetery, Istanbul’s main international burial ground, celebrated WDEC 2025 on May 28 with a guided tour, speeches, and the planting of a “peace tree.”

About the Event

To mark WDEC 2025 and highlight the spirit of international understanding and unity that has characterized the Feriköy Protestant Cemetery since its founding in 1859, an olive tree (a symbol of peace since ancient times) was planted in front of the chapel on May 28, 2025. Embodying the motto of ASCE’s Peace Tree Project, “Live in peace to rest in peace,” the tree is now a permanent reminder for cemetery visitors of the need for empathy and accord to counter aggression and foster just, harmonious societies that bind humanity rather than divide it. This was the first time the Feriköy Protestant Cemetery participated in WDEC, and the tree planting made it especially meaningful and memorable.

The event began with a guided tour of the cemetery lead by Feriköy Protestant Cemetery Initiative members Fokke Gerritsen (Netherlands Institute in Turkey) and Brian Johnson (American Research Institute in Turkey). Speeches by Consul General of The Netherlands Arjen Uijterlinde and President of the Governing Board of the Feriköy Protestant Cemetery Sebastiaan Kuipers followed, after which the tree was ceremoniously planted. A dedication plaque will be added later. The celebration concluded with a refreshments for the roughly forty guests, including members of the foreign diplomatic corps and cemetery friends and supporters.

Brian Johnson describes the gravestones of Monument Row, some of the oldest in the cemetery, which date from the early 1600s to the mid 1800s

Fokke Gerritsen speaks about some of the prominent people commemorated on the Dutch Memorial, whose names testify to the historic presence of the Netherlands in the Ottoman Empire from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries

2025 Governing Board President Sebastiaan Kuipers officially dedicates the Peace Tree (left)

Consul General of The Netherlands Arjen Uijterlinde addresses the audience by the Peace Tree

2024 Governing Board President Marc Seemann (Vice-Consul of the Federal Republic of Germany) shovels the first soil on the Peace Tree

The Feriköy Protestant Cemetery Peace Tree

About the Feriköy Protestant Cemetery

Founded in 1859, the Feriköy Protestant Cemetery is the principal burial place for Istanbul’s foreign Protestant and otherwise non-Catholic or Orthodox dead. It is managed by a governing board comprised of the consulates-general of Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Sweden, Hungary, Switzerland, and the USA. The board is assisted in its administrative task by the Feriköy Protestant Cemetery Initiative, a scholarly working group affiliated with six Turkey-based international research centers, including the American Research Institute in Turkey, the Netherlands Institute in Turkey, the Orient-Institut Istanbul, the Hungarian Cultural Center, the Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul, and the British Institute at Ankara.

Additional information

Further details about the Feriköy Protestant Cemetery and its history and administration can be found on its ASCE webpage and on the website of the Feriköy Protestant Cemetery Initiative. Inquiries about the Initiative and its projects can be sent to info@ferikoycemetery.org.

Feriköy Protestant Cemetery, Istanbul: New website, new bulletin

The Feriköy Protestant Cemetery Initiative has updated its website, which includes the latest edition of the bulletin The Ledger.

The Feriköy Protestant Cemetery Initiative has updated its website with fresh content about the cemetery and the Initiative’s efforts to preserve and promote it for more than half a decade. Besides presenting six years of activities and outreach, the site contains publications and other resources about the cemetery. 

Included among the items is the latest edition of the Initiative’s bulletin, The Ledger, published in December 2024. Entering its fifth year in 2025, the bulletin not only reports current happenings but also features articles about the cemetery's inhabitants and history, highlighting new information as it comes to light.

Inquiries about the Feriköy Protestant Cemetery Initiative and its projects can be sent to info@ferikoycemetery.org. Correspondence about The Ledger can be addressed to the editor bdjohnson62@gmail.com.

Festive gathering at the Feriköy Protestant Cemetery

A special event, that marked the five-year anniversary of the Feriköy Protestant Cemetery Initiative and its efforts for the Feriköy Protestant Cemetery.

About the event

On 15 December 2023, the Feriköy Protestant Cemetery Initiative held its second annual seasonal gathering at Istanbul’s Feriköy Protestant Cemetery. Besides celebrating the holidays, the event showcased the results of a major 2023 preservation project. Supervised by Initiative member The American Research Institute in Turkey (ARIT), with funding from the US Mission to Türkiye as well as a private donor, the conservation work comprised shoring up, realigning, repairing, and cleaning twelve historic tombs in the cemetery’s US section. Several other achievements of 2023 were also celebrated, including the completion of a year-long study of the cemetery’s ecology supported by the British Institute at Ankara and the finalization of monument recording in the cemetery’s German section by interns from Orient-Institut Istanbul (OII).

Attended by members of foreign diplomatic missions and research centers, students and administrators from Istanbul’s Robert College (RC), and other guests, the event opened with speeches and a music program in the cemetery’s chapel, continued with a tour of the renovation area, and ended with a reception, which included the cutting of an “Initiative cake.”

Robert College also held a memorial ceremony beside four of the newly restored tombs that commemorate family members of the school's founder, Cyrus Hamlin. A new RC memorial plaque on the wall behind the tombs was also unveiled, along with a newly designed information panel for the cemetery's US section, which serves as a model for further informational signage in the cemetery’s other international sections. Prototype QR codes for two of the renovated monuments were also highlighted as a method for providing details about those that the tombs commemorate.

This event marked the five-year anniversary of the Initiative and its efforts for the Feriköy Protestant Cemetery. Among its many activities, the Initiative has mapped the cemetery; recorded and renovated its monuments; studied its ecology; publicized its history; catalogued and digitized its archive; and created new rules and procedures to improve its administration. “PCI”—professionalism in all its endeavors, cooperation among its members and with the cemetery’s governing board and the public, and involvement in all aspects of the site—is the hallmark of the Protestant Cemetery Initiative, both for the last half decade and for the future.

Please write to initiative@ferikoycemetery.org or further information about the Initiative, its work, and how to become involved.

Photos:

QR code to scan.

WDEC 2023 at the Feriköy Protestant Cemetery

The Feriköy Protestant Cemetery Initiative has organised two interesting events that will focus on learning and promoting knowledge about the cemetery.

3 June 2023: Online lecture

The Feriköy Protestant Cemetery Initiative presents "The Feriköy Protestant Cemetery and Heritage of Monument Row". A joint online lecture by Daniel-Joseph MacArthur-Seal and Brian Johnson, that will take place on Saturday, 3 June 2023, at 17.00 London time (19.00 İstanbul time).

Located in the center of European Istanbul, the Feriköy Protestant Cemetery has served as the city’s main burial place for Protestants and others since its opening in 1859. It has tremendous historical value, with heritage from much earlier than the nineteenth century. Some of its monuments date as far back as the 1600s, having been moved to Feriköy from a former cemetery in Istanbul’s famed Grand Champs des Morts, which had served the Protestant community for almost three hundred years before 1859.

This lecture, in celebration of the Association of Significant Cemeteries of Europe’s 2023 Week of Discovering European Cemeteries, will summarize the origins and history of the Feriköy Protestant Cemetery and discuss in detail some of the oldest memorials in “Monument Row,” the cemetery’s most iconic spot containing funerary monuments predating the cemetery itself. It will also describe the efforts under way to document this rich legacy and preserve the cemetery both as a heritage site and active burial ground.

You can find a short presentation of the lecturers HERE.

ZOOM LINK: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/88935689486?pwd=cGRkU00wMWpYdHpQMitkNkdrUDl3QT09

4 June 2023: Open day

On 4 June, a special "Open Day" will take place at the Feriköy Protestant Cemetery, which will include tours, presentations, and refreshment for a large but select group, including our diplomats, academicians and cultural affairs people, and individuals from the expat community who have expressed an interest in becoming involved with a potential cemetery "friends" organization. We intend to tie the event with the theme of the WDEC 2023.

Feriköy Protestant Cemetery celebrates its acceptance into ASCE

The event took place on December 8, 2022, in the cemetery chapel.

About the event

On December 8, 2022, celebration of the official recognition of the Feriköy Protestant Cemetery as a member of ASCE took place in the cemetery chapel.

Feriköy Protestant Cemetery Initiative members Brian Johnson and Richard Wittmann presented the cemetery's ASCE membership certificate to the president of the governing board, Kirsten Thompson, U.S. Consulate, Istanbul. This was followed by a flute solo by Johannes Regenbrecht and a singing performance by the Members of the German High School choral group. The event ended with a small reception and cake cutting in front of the chapel.

The celebration was attended by the German, Swedish, Hungarian, Swiss, Dutch, UK, and US diplomatic corps; the Feriköy Protestant Cemetery Initiative; the German High School; and Istanbul’s Robert College.

A short video of the event is available HERE and the Publication of the Feriköy Protestant Cemetery Initiative HERE.

Photos:

*Photos by Andrea Selimoğlu

Feriköy Protestant Cemetery (Istanbul, Turkey)

Despite its modest presence, the Feriköy Protestant Cemetery is a major historic landmark with an international legacy that reaches back much earlier than its opening in 1859.

Cemetery history

The origins of the Feriköy Protestant Cemetery date back to 1853, when the Ottoman government gave land in Istanbul’s Feriköy district as a burial ground for the city’s foreign Protestant and Catholic communities to replace an earlier cemetery, located in the city's renowned necropolis of the Grand Champs des Morts.

In use since the sixteenth century, the old site had become a hindrance to urban expansion. The creation of the new cemetery, on what was then the city’s outskirts, not only provided more space for interments but also matched contemporary efforts in Europe to close inner-city graveyards and replace them with more hygienic burial grounds distant from settled areas.

The move to the new cemetery was postponed by the Crimean War, and in 1857, the land allotted four years earlier was considered insufficient to meet the needs of both Protestants and Catholics. Consequently, a separate site nearby for Protestants alone was granted to the embassies of several contemporary leading Protestant nations: Great Britain, Prussia, the United States of America, the Netherlands, Denmark, the United Kingdoms of Sweden and Norway, and the Federated Cities of the Hanseatic League. After negotiations and the approval of their governments, these embassies drafted operating statutes and agreed to share the duty and cost of managing the cemetery.

The first burial occurred in November 1858, and the Feriköy Protestant Cemetery opened officially in February 1859. Since that time it has served as the chief cemetery for Istanbul’s foreign Protestant (and otherwise non-Catholic or Orthodox) dead.

Cemetery landscape

The cemetery’s landscape is not significant for its tidy, planned layout but to the contrary, for its unaffected natural beauty and a wildness and abandonment that accentuates its romantic charm. With many trees and rich foliage, the cemetery is a sanctuary of nature. It is frequented by both local and migratory birds and is also home to tortoises and lizards, not to mention abundant insect life.

This ecological aspect is especially vital today since the cemetery is one of very few green spots left in Istanbul’s urban sprawl. It is a priceless gift to the city, which was created by drift rather than by design.

Cemetery chapel

The single most important architectural element in the cemetery is the chapel. Though no exact record has yet come to light about who designed it or the precise date it was constructed, cemetery accounting records clearly show that it was erected before 1868, in the first decade after the cemetery opened (1859-68).

The chapel’s English, neo-Gothic style resembles Beyoğlu’s Crimean Memorial Church, another Istanbul landmark that was built in the same period. Both are linked to the burgeoning of Istanbul’s Protestant community in the wake of the Crimean War and the creation of new establishments to serve it, including the cemetery itself, as well as the erection of monuments with Ottoman support to commemorate the assistance and sacrifices of European allies in the conflict, especially Great Britain.

The chapel’s distinctive “English” appearance is probably the main reason why the Feriköy Protestant Cemetery was often referred to in the past as the “English Cemetery,” as seen on nineteenth-century maps, photos, and postcards.

Important graves and monuments

Some of the important graves and monuments at the Feriköy Protestant Cemetery are:

• For enterprise and celebrity – Franz Carl Bomonti (1857-1903), Brewer
• For literature and learning – John Freely (1926-2017), Author, Teacher
• For exploration and unconventionality – J. B. Crighton Ginsburg (c.1826-1898), Preacher
• For wealth and grandeur – Henri Maurice Rampacher (1816-1866), Merchant
• For education and creativity – Traugott Fuchs (1906-1997), Scholar, Artist
• For variety and inclusion – The Nakamura Tombstone
• For communal richness and vitality – The Memorials of “Monument Row”

Cemetery significance

Despite its modest presence, the Feriköy Protestant Cemetery is a major historic landmark with an international legacy that reaches back much earlier than its opening in 1859. 

The cemetery bears witness to the critical role of generations of Europeans and other Westerners in the social, economic, and political life of the Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey. It testifies to Istanbul’s communal diversity and richness. It is the last resting place of generations of individuals who left their mark both locally and beyond.

Besides this testament to the past, the cemetery offers proof of international union—a point that was underscored in an address by the pastor of the Prussian legation at the cemetery’s opening in 1859, when he praised the cooperative effort made to establish it by the foreign legations that represented the chief Protestant powers of the day: “. . . [All] members of the Protestant community,” he said, “. . . joined in harmony. The worldly authorities set an example. . . [This place] is—God willing—a permanent memorial to the union of Protestant princes and nations. . . .”

His words remain valid today. An active burial ground managed by a diplomatic governing board composed of the representatives of many nations, the Feriköy Protestant Cemetery is—as it has been throughout its history—a tribute to international unity and cooperation.

Cemetery management

The current governing board is comprised of the consuls general of Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Sweden, Hungary, Switzerland, and the USA.

In 2018, the Feriköy Protestant Cemetery Initiative, a scholarly working group, was established to document and preserve the cemetery as a heritage site. Affiliated with six Turkey-based international research centers (the American Research Institute in Turkey, the Netherlands Institute in Turkey, the Orient-Institut Istanbul, the Hungarian Cultural Center, the Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul, and the British Institute at Ankara), the Initiative serves as an advisory group to the diplomatic governing board, the first such body in the cemetery's history.

Address

Cumhuriyet Mahallesi
Abide-i Hürriyet Cd. No: 5
34380 Şişli, Istanbul
Turkey

Contacts

Cemetery services:
admin@ferikoycemetery.org

General inquiries:
info@ferikoycemetery.org

Queries to the editor of the bulletin:
bdjohnson62@gmail.com

Managing organization

Diplomatic Governing Board of the Feriköy Protestant Cemetery of Istanbul

Useful links

Website:
https://ferikoycemetery.org/

Bulletin:
https://ferikoycemetery.org/ledger/

Basic cemetery data

Year of first burial: 1858
Cemetery area: 1,42ha
Number of graves: approximately 1.000 marked gravesites
Number of burials: approximately 5.000