Başağalar Family Tree

names

1,014in the genealogy

generations

12from Başağa to today

branches

4Abidin, İpşir, Süleyman, Hamza

surnames

5under the 1934 Surname Law

The genealogy as a rosette

Each segment is a person. Başağa is at the centre, Küçük Başağa around him, and each ring outwards is a generation. A segment’s width is proportional to that person’s descendants. Tap a segment.

Family tree

Tap a name to see that person’s line of descent, children and siblings. You can share the link from the person card.

The Turkic peoples in the genealogy

Both editions open with the compiler’s chart placing the family among the Turkic peoples. The chart and its classification belong to the genealogy. (Yalçın, Genealogy 2022)

Fallen in war

People marked “şehit” (fallen) in the genealogy. According to the 1984 notes, many of the family’s grown sons fell in the wars of the Ottoman Empire’s final years; the names of those who could be identified are marked “şehit”. The 2022 notes add that not all of them could be identified by name. (Yalçın, Genealogy 1984) (Yalçın, Genealogy 2022)

• İsmail 6. generation
• Hasan 6. generation
• Hüseyin 6. generation
• Mehmet 6. generation
• İbrahim 6. generation
• Ali 6. generation
• Ahmet 7. generation
• Bektaş 7. generation
• Hasan 7. generation
• Minnet 7. generation

Oral account Testimonies in the notes: Küllöz [?] Mustafa told Ali Yalçın that Ali Dede, his namesake, fell at Sarıkamış; Alöğ Dede said he took part in the War of Independence and reached İzmir in the Great Offensive; Kör Mustafa Dede said he fought as an artillery sergeant on the Palestine Front in the First World War and was taken prisoner by the British. (Yalçın, Notes 1984, p. 6, 9)

The elders who gave the information

According to Ali Yalçın’s notes, the genealogy’s information was gathered in one-to-one conversations in 1956, 1963, 1969, 1973 and 1977. Most of it mentions Yusuf Ağa, known to have served as village head for many years. The other elders named in the notes: (Yalçın, Notes 1984, p. 5–6)

• Abbas Ağa
• Zeynep (babaannesi)
• Hüseyin Oktay
• Ebuseyif Oktay
• Hüseyin Ağa
• Mahmut Öztürk
• Eğitmen Efendi
• Paşa Dayı
• Hacı Ali Dede
• Ali Efendi
• Ali Güner
• Hacı Güner
• Aşkar Hasan
• Öğretmen Ali Öztürk
• Öğretmen Avni Oktay
• Âşık Yusuf
• Bektaş Amca
• Yusuf Dede
• Ayıp Emmi
• Hacı Ağa
• Hüseyin Yıldırım
• Küllöz [?] Mustafa
• Yusuf Erhan
• İmam Dede
• Öğretmen Hüseyin Yılmaz
• Mehmet Öztürk
• Mehmet Yalçın
• Haydar Öztürk
• Alöğ Dede

How to read the genealogy

• A surname in brackets is the married surname of a daughter of the family, e.g. Zeynep (Kutlu).
• A circled number marks the surname adopted under the 1934 Surname Law: ① Oktay, ② Koç, ③ Öztürk, ④ Yılmaz, ⑤ Yalçın.
• “Ağa” was used in the family as a traditional title; according to the genealogy’s notes it implies no privilege.
• The small number next to a name is the count of that person’s recorded descendants.

(Yalçın, Genealogy 2022)

The story of the genealogy

Staff Colonel Ali Yalçın completed the first edition of the genealogy in İzmir on 3 July 1984. According to his notes he researched the family’s past from 1953 to 1984, gathering information in one-to-one conversations with family elders in 1956, 1963, 1969, 1973 and 1977. (Yalçın, Notes 1984, p. 5)

The second, enlarged edition is dated 11 January 2022. It incorporates additions sent by families and, for the first time, includes the women of the family. It was drawn digitally by Ali İhsan, Gamze and Ahmetcan Aygün at the Aygün architectural office in İzmir. (Yalçın, Genealogy 2022)

According to the family’s account Reported

After the Russo-Ottoman War of 1828–1830 the family migrated from south-western Turkmenistan and north-eastern Khorasan, settled around Keskin in the early 1840s and, a few years later, was settled in the Mezirme area by the Governorate of Harput. (Yalçın, Genealogy 2022)

In 1953, when a storey was added to Ali Ağa’s house, a sheet written in the old script and wrapped in leather was found inside the juniper main beam. It was read aloud by the village teacher and, as Yalçın relates, crumbled and was lost. The genealogy’s earliest information comes from this sheet and from the accounts of family elders. (Yalçın, Notes 1984, p. 3–4)

From the third generation the family’s branches came to be known as the İpşir Ağalar, the Süleyman (Ali) Ağalar and the Abidin Ağalar. The lines of Hasan Ağa and Hamza Ağa did not continue. (Yalçın, Genealogy 2022)

This is the family’s own account as compiled by Ali Yalçın; it has not yet been checked against official records.

A note on the number of people

The 2022 notes state that the genealogy contains the names of 963 family members. The tree on this site counts every underlined name in the drawing as a person and therefore has 1,014 names. The reason for the difference (later additions, or names that appear twice) has not yet been examined.

How the tree was extracted

The tree was read by computer from the drawing of the 2022 genealogy: each name and the arrowed lines linking it to its parent were traced one by one. The 56 places the drawing could not resolve automatically were checked by hand against the image and recorded. If you spot a mistake, please let us know.

Full texts of the documents

The introduction and notes of the 1984 genealogy, Ali Yalçın’s 12 pages of handwritten notes and the ten-point notes of the 2022 edition, transcribed in full on a separate page:

Read the documents

Original documents

• Genealogy, second edition (2022) PDF · 0.3 MB
• Genealogy, first edition (1984) PDF · 2.7 MB
• Handwritten notes, 12 pages (1984) PDF · 7.6 MB

The documents are published with the compiler’s permission. They are in Turkish.

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