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A sewing machine dating back 106 years, once used to sew and repair uniforms of soldiers involved in Türkiye's National Struggle, including Mehmet Rifat Borekci, the first head of the Presidency of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) of the Republic of Türkiye, is now on display at a cafe called "Birr Mekan Iyilik-Sanat-Kahve," run by the Turkish Diyanet Foundation (TDV).
The machine, which has survived from the years of the National Struggle to the present day, was preserved within Borekci's family for many years.
Borekci's granddaughter, Zisan Saat, donated the historic machine left by her grandfather to the Presidency of Religious Affairs in 2023.
The century-old sewing machine, which bore witness to the National Struggle, has been meeting visitors at Birr Mekan for about six months.
Ayse Nur Kapusuz, director of TDV's Women, Family and Volunteer Services, said that after Zisan Saat expressed her wish to donate the machine that belonged to her grandfather, she was visited at her home and the machine was received.
Kapusuz noted that the machine had been used for years and that it originally operated with a pedal but underwent some modifications so it could run on electricity. She said it had never been displayed anywhere before.
"It passed down to his granddaughter," she said. "His granddaughter also used it and decided it was appropriate to gift it, to entrust it, to the Presidency."
The director emphasized that displaying the machine at Birr Mekan was very valuable. She described it as a machine that bears witness to the National Struggle, on which the uniforms of soldiers, officers, and perhaps martyrs, perhaps veterans, who shed their blood and devoted their lives for the land people comfortably live on today were sewn.
"When it was first entrusted to us, it began to be displayed at our Iyilik Ateliers located in Haci Bayram," Kapusuz said.
"With the relocation of our Iyilik Atelier to Birr Mekan, we decided it was appropriate to display it here."
She described the venue as a place where citizens can easily come and go, see the products that are made, purchase them, and sit down to drink their tea or coffee, adding that displaying the machine in such a corner allows everyone who visits to easily see it as well.
Kapusuz said that by displaying the historic sewing machine at Birr Mekan, they were drawing a connection between the machine's past function and its present one.
"Just as this machine once produced an act of goodness by sewing and repairing the uniforms of our soldiers, this venue of ours is also a place of commerce where goodness is produced, where work is done for charity, and where all the proceeds from the products made are spent entirely on charitable projects, so there is an integration in this sense as well," she said. "This is also a sign that goodness is still being produced."
She added that just as goodness was once built through a sewing machine, goodness continues to be built through a sewing machine at the Iyilik Atelier as well.
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