Bethlen Gábor hatalomra kerülése a török forrásokban és történetírásban. Tayyib Gökbilgin kutatásai és eredményei
Gábor Bethlen's rise to power as seen in Ottoman sources and historiography. Tayyib Gökbilgin's research work and results

Summary/Abstract: The paper aims to call attention to the lifework of Tayyip Gökbilgin, who, thanks to his Hungarology studies completed in Ankara, was mostly interested in Turkish-Hungarian history. Gökbilgin's works provide an overview of almost the entire period of Turkish- Hungarian relations. But the paper discusses in detail only one of his papers, published in 1950, which gives a brief account of the 16th-century history of the Transylvanian independent state, while focusing on Gábor Bethlen's rise to power. The work is a thorough critique of the opinion of Gyula Szekfű, the leading Hungarian historian of the interwar period. Gökbilgin wrote this paper after conducting thorough research in various archives, so his results reveal novelties to Hungarian historians. But the paper goes beyond presenting how the arguments of the Turkish historian counter the views of his Hungarian colleague: it also provides additional data on the history of Gábor Bethlen's rise to power, based on the author's own research. Using the text of a memorandum from the Grand Vizier, it specifies the point from when the Sublime Porte was effectively preparing for an armed solution. (The source is being prepared for publication by Mehmet Tosun and Feridun M. Emecen, I used it and published its text in Turkish and in Hungarian translation with their permission.) At the same time, on the basis of the first Ottoman charter it was possible to substantiate the fact that the Porte already considered Gábor Bethlen the de facto ruler of Transylvania at least one month before his election.

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