Mustafa Olpak

Olpak's ancestors, of Kikuyu ethnicity from today's Kenya,^[2] were enslaved around the year 1890, brought to Crete and sold in Rethymno. Following the population exchange between Greece and Turkey, the family settled in Ayvalık.^[3] Olpak married a Turkish woman named Sevgi in İzmir after his military service.^[4]

In 2006, Olpak founded the first officially recognised organisation of Afro-Turks, the Africans' Culture and Solidarity Society (Afrikalılar Kültür ve Dayanışma Derneği) in Ayvalık.^[5] The opening ceremony was attended by Ali Moussa Iye, the Chief of UNESCO Slave Routes Project.^[6][7] A principal aim of the association is to promote studies of oral history of Afro-Turks, a community history of whom was usually ignored by official historiography in Turkey.

The Turkish film Arap Kızı Camdan Bakıyor^[8] ("The Arab Girl Looks from the Window," released with the English title of Baa Baa Black Girl)^[9] discusses how his grandfather was purchased as a household slave by a Turkish family, but later moved to Istanbul after the Turkish Revolution.^[10]

• Tariş Direnişleri ve 12 Eylül (Tariş Resistances and 12 September), with Sevgi Olpak^[11]
• Kölelikten Özgürlüğe: Arap Kadın Kemale (From Slavery to Freedom: "Arab" Woman Kemale) 2002
• Kenya-Girit-İstanbul: Köle Kıyısından İnsan Biyografileri (Kenya-Crete-İstanbul: Human Biographies from the Slave Coast), İstanbul, Ozan Yayıncılık, 2005 ISBN 975-7891-80-0
  • Kenya-Crète-Istanbul: Biographie d'une famille d'esclaves, Paris, Librairie Özgül, 2006 ISBN 978-2-910901-02-8

• Arap Kızı Camdan Bakıyor ("The Arab Girl Looks from the Window," released in English as Baa Baa Black Girl), Director:,^[12] Narrator: Mustafa Olpak,^[13] 46', 2007, Turkey^[14]