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An Gorta Mór: The Star & The Crescent is a planned 40-minute documentary about Ottoman-era assistance during Ireland’s Great Famine and the historical ties between Türkiye and Ireland. A report published by Hürriyet Daily News on October 7, 2026, says filming is expected to finish in 2027, with a festival journey planned for 2028. The film will examine a documented £1,000 donation from the Ottoman Sultan alongside a more disputed story about relief ships arriving at Drogheda.
What is An Gorta Mór: The Star & The Crescent about?
The documentary takes its title from the Irish name for the Great Famine, An Gorta Mór, and the crescent associated with Türkiye. It is intended to explore famine-era aid and the relationship between Ireland and the Ottoman Empire, with a present-day thread connecting Trabzonspor and Drogheda United.
Hürriyet Daily News reports that Hayriye Savaşçıoğlu is directing and producing the film, with Ülkü Uzun also producing. The planned 40-minute documentary is to draw on Ottoman and Irish archival records, letters, historical documents, research, and interviews with academics and historians. These are reported production plans, not a confirmed final cut or release schedule.
The first footage was shot at a Trabzon friendly match on October 1, 2026, according to the report. Further filming is planned in Istanbul, Drogheda, Dublin, and New York. The report says filming is expected to conclude in 2027 and the festival journey is scheduled to begin in 2028; either plan may change.
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The film also links the historical subject to a reported relationship between Trabzonspor and Drogheda United. Hürriyet Daily News says the connection dates to support from Trabzonspor and people in Trabzon during Drogheda United financial difficulties around two decades ago. The report does not establish a more precise date or a direct causal link between that support and the documentary.
What is documented about Ottoman aid to Ireland?
Ireland’s official account of Turkish-Irish relations traces the relationship to the Great Famine and records an 1847 letter signed by Anglo-Irish gentry thanking the Ottoman Sultan for a £1,000 donation. That official Irish government account supports the financial-aid claim: it is the clearest documented point behind the film’s historical premise.
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The famine was a prolonged catastrophe, not a single season of crop loss. President of Ireland’s address on the Great Famine describes potato blight arriving in late summer 1845, near-total crop destruction in 1846, the starvation and disease associated with “Black 47,” and a continuing crisis into the early 1850s. The National Archives of Ireland dates the Great Famine to 1845–1852.
President of Ireland’s address says over one million people perished from hunger or, more commonly, hunger-related disease, and more than 1.8 million emigrated in the decade following 1846. Hürriyet Daily News gives broader rounded estimates of around one million deaths and some two million departures in its October 7, 2026 report. These figures have different wording and scope, so they should be understood as estimates attributed to their respective sources, not combined into a single tally.
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Did Ottoman ships bring famine relief to Drogheda?
The evidence does not establish that the Sultan dispatched ships to Drogheda as famine relief. Ireland Made’s historical explainer says Turkish and Irish national archive records and surviving Drogheda port records do not confirm an Ottoman famine-relief shipment. That absence does not mean no relief vessels arrived: contemporary local newspaper accounts reported ships carrying supplies to the town.
Ireland Made reports that the Drogheda Argus and Drogheda Conservative published accounts between May 10 and 14, 1847, of three vessels bringing relief supplies to Drogheda. Irish historian Brendan Matthews proposes that two vessels arriving from Thessaloniki carried food, and identifies another vessel said to have brought wheat and corn from Szczecin. These newspaper reports and Matthews’s interpretation are not confirmation that the Sultan sent those vessels or that their cargoes were part of Ottoman famine relief.
Ireland Made also reproduces an English rendering of a sentence from a thank-you letter presented to Sultan Abdülmecit in 1849: “This timely and helpful assistance saved many from ruin.” The article’s rendering conveys the gratitude described there; it should not be treated as a verified diplomatic transcription of the original document.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.How should the two historical claims be weighed?
| Claim | Evidence described in the sources | What can responsibly be said |
|---|---|---|
| Ottoman cash donation | Ireland’s official relationship account cites an 1847 letter signed by Anglo-Irish gentry thanking the Sultan for £1,000. | The donation is supported by an official Irish government account. |
| Relief ships at Drogheda | Local newspapers reported vessels bringing supplies in May 1847; Irish and Turkish archival records and surviving port records described by Ireland Made do not confirm an Ottoman relief shipment. | Contemporary reports describe arriving relief vessels, but their attribution to Ottoman famine relief remains unconfirmed. |
| Meaning of the aid | A scholarly article frames Ottoman assistance as humanitarian and diplomatic, and distinguishes historical evidence from later narratives of Turkish-Irish friendship. | The documented donation can be recognized without treating every later ship story or friendship narrative as established fact. |
The distinction matters because the sources represent different kinds of evidence: a later official summary of a letter, contemporary newspaper reports, archival records, and modern historical interpretation. The £1,000 donation has support in Ireland’s official account; the ships’ presence is reported in local newspapers, but their connection to an Ottoman relief mission is not established by the records described here.
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Where can researchers explore the famine records?
The National Archives of Ireland describes a substantial government record of responses to the crisis. From 1846, government agencies received letters, reports, and petitions from famine-stricken areas. The Distress Papers and Relief Commission collections include reports on distress, letters from local relief committees, funding applications, and correspondence about relief projects. Their indexes cover records from parts of 1846 and the period 1846–1847.
Those collections can help researchers examine the relief landscape around the time of the reported donation and ship arrivals. Their existence does not by itself verify a particular vessel, cargo, or Ottoman role; each claim depends on what the relevant records actually document.
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