About the Directorate General

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs Archives preserve valuable documents produced by Ministry departments or transferred from other institutions since 1919. These documents, which were kept in the main service building in Kızılay from the Ministry’s establishment until 1987, continued to be preserved at their original location in Kızılay for some time even after the Ministry moved to its new headquarters in Balgat in 1987.

A significant transformation took place following the cooperation protocol signed between the Ministry and the General Directorate of State Archives (DAGM) in 2000. Under this agreement, Ministry staff were assigned to work within the DAGM, establishing the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Archives Unit, and the archival materials were transferred to the DAGM’s Yenimahalle campus.

Between 2001 and 2013, the archives stored in the Yenimahalle warehouses were moved to a modern archive building constructed in Çiğdem Neighborhood and opened in 2012, following a meticulous five-month operation. Today, while documents from the Ministry’s central units that have acquired archival status are preserved in this building, archives belonging to our overseas missions are also being transferred here.

With the transition to the Presidential Government System, the Ministry’s archive acquired a new legal status under Presidential Decree No. 11 dated July 16, 2018. Our archive, integrated into the “State Archives Network” and “Researcher Interface” established by the Presidency of State Archives, contributes to the vision of providing access to data from all public institutions through a single point of entry.