This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
The General Directorate of Foundations, known in Turkish as Vakiflar Genel Mudurlugu (VGM), was founded in 1924 as the Turkish state body responsible for administering and auditing vakif, waqf-type charitable foundations under Turkish civil law. Its founding sits in the same year the Ottoman caliphate was abolished, placing VGM among the institutions the new Turkish republic built to take over functions religious authorities had previously held.
VGM's mandate splits into two different jobs handled the same way institutions elsewhere split trusteeship from oversight. It directly manages foundations left without a living founder or trustee, stepping in as the operator itself, and separately audits other foundations that retain their own management, checking rather than running them. Across both roles it oversees historic mosques, schools and other charitable real estate spanning the country.
A century after its founding, VGM continues both functions side by side, direct management where a foundation has no one left to run it, and audit oversight where one still does, a division of labour set at the institution's founding that has outlasted the century of Turkish political change around it.