MEGARON, cilt.17, sa.1, ss.83-106, 2022 (ESCI)
Works by museologists with different occupations and titles featuring important documents are in the archive of the General Directorate of Cultural Heritage and Museums of T.R. Ministry of Culture and Tourism. Archivers recorded them at the Ministry of Culture's inventory as "promotional thesis" and organised them in 330 files from folders 1 to 34. The General Directorate of Classics and Museums demanded such theses from museologists for promotional purposes. Contents and constructs of dissertations about different fields and subjects featured important references. Therefore, these theses have a characteristic to enlarge the scale of research topics or enhance efforts leading to literature scanning for respective research subjects. Thirty-seven of 330 theses with known dates and authors included important information in architectural history and were investigated in the doctoral thesis study. Such 37 dissertations covering the period 1943-1973 were prepared considering Law on Organization of Museums and Observatories numbered 2530 enacted in TGNA on 23rd June 1934. It is the first legal arrangement in Turkish museology's history to officially register museums as separate institutions causing a leap in Turkish museology as of its effective date. With this law, guidebooks illuminating cities' architectural history written by museologists between 1930s and 1970s and published by the Board of Education and Ministry of Culture were prepared alongside promotional theses - products of Turkish museology's progress. This study illustratively evaluates promotional theses written based on law dated 1934 in architectural history. With the study of the 37 theses, written between 1943 and 1973, detection of another respective thesis in the archive and determination of the relevant legislative link and reasoning behind has gained critical importance. When we look at the selection of the topics of the promotion thesis, we see a great variety and substantiality in the subjects. Additionally, it has been targeted to inspire the researchers who have studied in the fields of the topics of respective thesis and their topics. The subjects in these archive documents are archaeological sites, single building scale, urban history studies and period studies. Within the scope of this article, one example of these topics has been selected. The thesis chosen as an example of archaeological sites is Raci Temizer's thesis entitled "Ayazmayeni Koyu Kayapinar Hoyugu Buluntulari" written in 1952. Another thesis is the subject of a single structure scale and M. Hadi Altay's thesis titled "Revan Kosku", written in 1958. The third thesis is an example of urban history studies titled "Kastamonu Eski Eserler Kilavuzu" and it was written by Ahmet Gokoglu in 1949. The last sample promotion thesis chosen as a period study belongs to the Cengiz Koseoglu. The title of the promotion thesis written in 1970 is "Maras'ta Dulkadiroglu Mimarisi". A detailed text about these theses is included in this article study. In addition, the catalogues of these four sample theses, which have been prepared in accordance with the A3 format in the excel file, have been included in the study. The differentiation of promotion theses in catalogues has been in the form of placing only selected sample pages from the text pages and turning all the images contained in the theses into one or more tables. Due to these catalogues, promotion theses have become more descriptive, and evaluations of these theses have been made in detail in many ways.