The staff of the Netherlands Institute in Turkey is saddened by the passing of Prof. Dr. Machiel Kiel (1938-2025), former director of the NIT (2003-2005).
Image: Machiel Kiel, 2002 (Photo by Aras Neftçi).
Machiel Kiel was a distinguished Ottomanist scholar, specialized in the architectural and social-economic history of the Ottoman Balkans. Following a career as a stonemason renovating historical buildings in the Netherlands, he conducted groundbreaking research in the 1970s and 1980s, documenting Ottoman architectural heritage throughout the (then Communist) countries of the Balkans. He combined this with original archival research in the Ottoman archives that brought to light the demographic, economic and social context of Ottoman building activity in the Balkans. His tireless efforts and countless public lectures and publications on the rich and diverse cultural heritage of the region were a major contribution to the establishment of a more positive appreciation of the Ottoman era in southeastern Europe.
Following his retirement from a professorship at Utrecht University, he was appointed Director of the Netherlands Institute in Turkey in 2003 and guided the institute through a difficult period when budgetary constraints and lack of suitable premises made it difficult to develop new initiatives. Thanks to Machiel Kiel’s reputation and large, international academic network, the institute continued to participate in the academic community of Istanbul and Türkiye and thus managed to bridge this difficult period.
From 2006 onwards, Machiel Kiel continued to be actively engaged with the institute as a senior research fellow, spent many shorter and longer research stays at the institute, often together with his wife and fellow Ottomanist, Dr. Hedda Reindl-Kiel. He gave lectures, took groups of students and researchers on tours, and was always happy to share his enormous knowledge with fellow researchers. He was an inspiration to young generations of scholars. As such, his contributions to the institute after his retirement were as significant as those during his directorship.
In 2010, the Netherlands Institute in Turkey and the Netherlands Institute for the Near East published the volume Monuments, Patrons, Contexts: Papers on Ottoman Europe Presented to Machiel Kiel (PINANS 115, Leiden), based on a conference held in Machiel Kiel’s honor in 2008 at the Netherlands Institute in Turkey in Istanbul.
A large selection of photos taken by Kiel during his research journeys in the Balkans have been digitized and can be consulted online here.