Deputy Secretary General Dr. Ömer Kocaman attended the funeral ceremony of Prof. Dr. Halil İnalcık.

Deputy Secretary General Dr. Ömer Kocaman took part in the funeral ceremony of world-famed historian and founder of the Department of History at Bilkent University Prof. Dr. Halil İnalcık who passed away on 25 July 2016 in Ankara at the age of 100. The Deputy Secretary General represented the Secretary General of the Turkic Council Ambassador Ramil Hasanov at the funeral ceremony which started on 27 July 2016 at the Faculty of Music and Performing Arts at Bilkent University and continued at the Bilkent Dogramacizade Mosque.

Deputy Secretary General Dr. Ömer Kocaman conveyed his condolences to the family of Prof. Dr. Halil İnalcık at the funeral which was attended by a number of high state officials, politicians, historians, writers and poets. He also expressed the sadness of losing such a valuable scientist, who made a great contribution to the history of Turkic World, and offered his condolences on behalf of the Secretary General of the Turkic Council Ambassador Ramil Hasanov and the Secretariat of Turkic Council.

Halil İnalcık, born on 26 May 2016 in Istanbul, originally was a Crimean Tatar. He started his higher education in 1936 in the Department of New Age History at the Faculty of Language, History and Geography of Ankara University. He completed his doctoral dissertation on the topic of Tanzimat Reform Era and the Bulgarian Question in 1942. After giving lectures in the same faculty on the history of Ottoman Empire and Europe for many years, he was invited to Department of History of the University of Chicago in 1972 as a “University Professor of Ottoman History”.

In 1973, he published a book entitled “The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age 1300-1600”. In 1993, he was invited to Bilkent University where he founded the Department of History. He had a very good knowledge of Ottoman Turkish; good knowledge of English, French, and German; as well as intermediate Arabic, Persian and Italian. Towards the end of the 20th century, Halil İnalcık was designated as one of the 2000 important social science figures in their respective fields by the International Center for Biography of Cambridge.