Building the Heritage: Politics and Historic Preservation in Turkey from the 19th Century to the 1980s

‘Cultural heritage’ is a contemporary construct that is produced through power relations. We define our relationship with past through cultural heritage. Therefore, historic preservation does not only mean conserving historic artifacts, it also means activating a mechanism where historic artifacts serve the needs of present. In this sense, historic preservation is not only a cultural activity, but also a political, economic, and ideological act. Since the 1970s, aligned with postcolonial theories, scholarly interest arose especially among the Anglo-Saxon academia to investigate the relationship between cultural heritage and power dynamics in societies. This relationship becomes more evident and significant in sharp political and social changes. During the times of conflicts, cultural heritage gains a political value. This thesis explores these relationships in Turkey where they are especially meaningful/percetiptible/fruitful for the connections between political changes, multiculturalism and postocolonial perspectives. It outlines the role of cultural heritage in Turkey from the nineteenth century until the 1980s in times of strong political and societal changes. These changes also define the chapters. Each chapter investigates historic preservation in a period that power dynamics changed. In Turkey, the relationship between historic preservation and politics has continuously been constructed, deconstructed, and redefined since the nineteenth century. The main aim of this doctoral research is to investigate the dynamics of this process in terms of conceptualization and management of architectural and urban heritage. Concept of ‘heritage’ emerged in Turkey in the nineteenth century with the term ‘old artifacts (asar-ı atika)’. This was the outcome of a dual process; on the one hand, it was a reaction against European actors who exported antiquities from Ottoman territories to Europe. On the other hand, the Ottoman interest in archaeology was a part of a bigger modernization project that was initiated with an aim to reach the level of the ‘West’. The Turkish Republic was founded with a state agenda to transform the Ottoman society to a modern secular ‘nation’. As the modernization reforms accelerated in this period, the new ruling class needed to rewrite the ‘history’ through archaeology by-passing the Ottoman past. In this framework, modern architecture played a significant role in transformation of the society. Simultaneously, new committees, museums, selective restoration projects, and urban planning functioned as tools to manage the Ottoman heritage. In the post-war period, the power of the republican rulers was ceded by the opposition who were critical to republican reforms. With the US support, the new government reshaped the cityscape of the historic İstanbul. Interestingly, the most powerful autonomous preservation committee was established in this period with authority above all the government departments. This committee did not perform as expected until a coup d’etat generated a power gap in the governance of the country. After the coup, the committee could raise standards of historic preservation to the level of Europe. However, the central decision-making mechanism, bureaucracy, and limited manpower and resources prevented reaching the same level in implementations. The committee’s decisions triggered destruction of historic structures rather than preservation of them. Despite the efforts to create a magic formula, an ‘Eureka’ moment that may answer all the challenges of historic preservation, principle decisions did not correspond to real-life. Response to this situation was a conceptual shift to define ‘areas’ or ‘lands’ (sit) as objects to be preserved rather than individual structures. Also in other countries, this shift had come along with international heritage discussions. The legal and operational instruments of this approach were generated in a time that the army intervened the state structure once more. With the new preservation law, asar-ı atika laws were changed for the first time after the republic was founded. What followed the new law was designations of urban, rural, natural, and archaeological lands as conservation areas (sit). Local authorities reacted against these designations since the centrally-made decisions did not meet the local needs. Moreover, they found sit procedures challenging. The conflict between the central decision-making mechanism and local authorities had started with the establishment of the committee, gradually accelerated, and finally reached its peak with sit designations. Ironically, the committee was shutdown with another coup d’etat in the early 1980s. Instead of a central committee, local preservation boards have been established allover Turkey and remained active until present day.