An idea born of a need became a digital memory of millions of pages.
Wikilala's story began with a question: why is the knowledge produced in the past, running to millions of pages, still so hard for researchers to reach?
Finding a particular person, event or concept inside a newspaper, journal or book published in the Ottoman era used to mean searching through volumes and thousands of pages for years.
"Why shouldn't this vast accumulation be searchable with today's technology?"
That was the founding idea behind Wikilala.The idea was born.
Wikilala's intellectual foundations were laid in 2016. Much of the books, newspapers, journals and other printed sources produced over roughly two centuries before the Alphabet Reform were not full-text searchable in the digital world.
To reach the information they needed, researchers usually had to go through sources page by page.
Out of this need grew the idea of bringing the written cultural heritage produced in Ottoman Turkish together in a single digital environment and making it searchable even with Latin letters.
The idea became a project under Hiperlink.
In 2019 Wikilala stopped being merely an idea and became one of Hiperlink's new digital library initiatives.
Led by project manager Sadi Özgür and project advisor Dr. Harun Tuncer, intensive work began on the technology for finding, scanning, digitising, cataloguing and making sources searchable within their text.
The digital collection was built step by step from open access sources, private collections, libraries and collectors. This became roughly two years of intensive preparation.
Wikilala met its researchers.
After two years of development and content preparation, Wikilala opened to researchers with its beta version in February 2021.
What set Wikilala apart was not only the size of the collection.
With its OCR and search infrastructure, users could search sources prepared in Ottoman Turkish with Latin letters as well as Arabic script, down to which page of which publication a word appeared on.
Wikilala reached a wider audience.
Right after launch, Wikilala began drawing the attention of the national and international press.
"The 'Google' of Ottoman printed works takes you back in history with one click"
A special interview covering Wikilala's origin story and future goals as told by Sadi Özgür and Dr. Harun Tuncer.
"A project shedding light on history: Wikilala"
Innovative Initiative of the Year Award
One of the milestones in Wikilala's journey came only a short while after launch.
At the programme held during the 57th Library Week, Wikilala received the "Innovative Initiative of the Year" award for its contribution to preserving cultural memory and making historical sources easier to research.
Receiving this award in its first months was significant recognition of Wikilala's approach of bringing cultural heritage together with technology.
A digital library growing towards two million pages
Wikilala's collection kept growing rapidly after launch.
By October 2021 the platform had become a digital research infrastructure allowing search across roughly 2 million Ottoman Turkish pages of newspapers, journals, books, articles and documents.
In the same period interest in Wikilala grew beyond Türkiye, and requests about the platform's research infrastructure began arriving from universities around the world.
From the Ottoman era to the early Republic
As Wikilala grew, so did the scope of its research material.
Initially focused mainly on Ottoman Turkish sources, the platform began adding Turkish publications from the early Republican period to its collection.
By 2022 Wikilala was in use in university libraries as a research database covering newspapers, journals and books from the Ottoman and early Republican periods between 1729 and 1950.
With institutional access at universities, Wikilala began strengthening its place in the academic research ecosystem.
Access across Türkiye through public libraries
Wikilala's institutional access network expanded beyond universities.
In 2024, access to the Wikilala Digital Library was provided through public libraries in Türkiye.
This opened the way for a much wider audience to reach historical sources, not only at academic institutions but through public libraries.
From an Ottoman archive to a comprehensive historical research platform
Over the years Wikilala's scope kept widening from the Ottoman era to the early Republic, and on towards the more recent Republican period.
In 2025–2026 the platform became a broad digital research platform covering newspapers, journals, books and documents from the Ottoman and Republican periods between 1729 and 2023.
While institutional access for universities and research institutions continued, Wikilala's collection and research tools were continuously developed.
Centuries of accumulation, in a single search.
Today Wikilala is not merely a digital archive of Ottoman Turkish works; it is a comprehensive digital research platform for researching within Türkiye's written cultural memory from the Ottoman era to the Republic.
Wikilala continues to bring newspapers, journals, books and special collections from different periods to researchers.
- The 100-year archive of the Cumhuriyet newspaper
- The Seyfettin Özege Collection
- Toplumsal Tarih journal
- various periodicals and special collections
among others.
We make knowledge produced in the past rediscoverable with today's technology.
An idea born of a need in 2016 is today a digital gateway to millions of pages of cultural memory.
And this story keeps growing with every new work added.
Explore Wikilala