Dear Enver Sengul,

    I am writing further to the telephone conversations earlier today with your museum in order to confirm that the Health Care Museum in the Sultan Bejezid II Complex has been awarded the Council of Europe Museum Prize for the year
2004 and to inform you on a number of related technical matters.

An official letter will be sent to you in due course by our President, Mr. Peter Schieder (MdB Germany). We shall also be informing the Turkish Ambassador here in Strasbourg, Mr Numan Hazar, and the Turkish Parliamentary Delegation, which is led by Mr Murat Mercan (TBMM). A press release will be apprearing shortly on our websites.

    This decision was taken in Paris yesterday for the Committee on Culture, Science and Education of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe on the basis of a recommendation by the European Museum Forum Jury (Mr Hans Woodtli was the EMF member who visited your museum). The Chairman of the Committee is Mr Lluis Maria de Puig (Spanish Deputy) and the rapporteur On the European museum awards is Mr Eddie O'Hara (United Kingdom MP). Your museum will receive a cash prize of 5,000 euros. Could you please let us know how this can be transferred to you (bank and account number). The money has to be paid before the end of the current financial year.

    Details of the European museum awards are available on our Internet site http://assembly.coe.int/museum/e_index.htm We shall be establishing a hypertext link to your own site. The person doing this is Mr Bas Klein telephone extension 4992.

    The official presentation ceremony is scheduled to take place in Strasbourg in the evening of Tuesday 27 April 2004. Your museum will be invited to be represented on that occasion (with expenses paid for one person to travel to Strasbourg). This will involved a short speech of around 5 minutes in English or French.

    Although we shall refer enquiries to your own Internet site, it would be helpful to have other printed material. When it comes to the ceremony in April, we can arrange a small exhibition in the Council of Europe building itself and distribute information leaflets about the museum at the ceremony (English and French are the official languages of the Council of Europe).

    At the ceremony the museum will receive a diploma and the trophy, a statuette about 50cms high by the Catalan artist Joan Miro', that it will hold for the rest of the year. It is currently valued at 24,500 euros and the usual arrangements should be made by the museum for transit and in situ insurance.

    This Strasbourg award ceremony is normally followed by a local event held in the winning museum in the course of the year. This we can discuss at a later stage.

    Please do not hesitate to contact me for any further information.

    Again congratulations and best wishes.

    Yours sincerely

    Christopher Grayson