Ercan Mensiz MD was born in Eskisehir in 1962. He had primary school educations in Malatya and Konya. During his secondary school education in Konya Anatolia High School he met the art (fret saw wood carving: naht). Just at that period he began to carve arabic calligraphic samples. His interest to Ottoman tugras started at that time. He dreamed to have all tugras as a child. In 1977 he transferred to Ankara Science High School and in 1980 he started to Hacettepe University School of Medicine. During these years he continued to naht carving and serigraphy calligraphic works. In beginning of 1990 years he came across to plotter machines and vector drawing on computer by a sign-maker and rejoiced too much. Because, application of vector drawings to Arabic calligraphy would be very interesting. In 1996 he reached to vector drawing software and as one of the first works he vectorized all Ottoman Sultan Tugras with patience. Many calligraphic works followed those. In beginning of millenium he published all Ottoman Sultan Tugras and their readings on internet as a subdomain. Getting interest to his page he bought (tugra.org) domain and reaching intense visits from more than 140 countries he convinced the value of his works. In beginning of millenium he settled in Tekirdag Cerkezkoy and by coming near to Istanbul he presented many exhibitions in Corlu, Cerkezkoy and İstanbul. His interviews about tugras published in several magazines, newspapers, internet sites and TV broadcasts.
In beginning of 2010 years he reached to book (Geometric Patterns in Islamic Arts) by Yildiz Demiriz. By the way he choosed a new target for himself to redraw this kind patterns in vector format on computer. To be capable to draw these patterns as unblemished way, a few more years passed and subsequently starting to draw these patterns, he couldn’t stop and redrew more than a thousand Islamic Geometric Patterns in vector format. He published about one tenth of these drawings in another website: (www.islamicpatterns.org)
If he served to Turkish-Islamic Cultural Heritage a little bit, this is a source of great happiness for him.
Ercan Mensiz MD
Ophthalmologist
Cerkezkoy/Tekirdag/Turkiye
December 2018
