The Knife’s Edge of the Present: Archaeology in Turkey from the Nineteenth Century to the 1940s

Dinler, Mesut

doi:10.1007/s10761-017-0446-x

Cited by 5 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 20 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…48 This was, according to Mesut Dinler, "the most symbolic act of the republic's efforts to tear down Ottoman identity." 49 Tahsin Öz, a colleague of Halil Edhem's in Ottoman times, became the director of Topkapı Sarâyı Müzesi and created a "narrative arrangement of the objects of imperial life by their aesthetic and historical value." 50 Halil Edhem was interested in Turkey's Islamic heritage and focused on Seljuk and Ottoman objects and architecture.…”

Section: National Narratives and Nostalgizing The Pastmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Archaeology of the Imperial Past: “Nostalgizing” in the German and Turkish Museums of the Interwar Period

Willert

2024

Auc Studia Territorialia

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Until 1918, representatives of the Konigliche Museen zu Berlin (Royal Museums of Berlin, now State Museums of Berlin) and Istanbul’s Muze-i Humayun (Imperial Museum, now the Istanbul Archeological Museum) excavated, extracted, and exhibited antiquities as part of their countries’ imperial projects. The material culture of past civilizations was used as a symbol of both empires’ imperial grandeur and territorial power. With the end of World War I, German and Ottoman archaeologists lost access to territories where they formerly acquired objects for their collections while previously transferred artifacts remained in the collections. After the empires collapsed and republics emerged in their place, German and Turkish museums were still managed by directors who had entered the institutions during imperial rule. A longing for the past and specific imaginings of the future emerged in both nations after the war. Nostalgic discourses shaped the development of the museums in the interwar period. This article focuses on the activities of museum directors from both countries. It provides a comparative analysis of nostalgizing museum practices in each country marked by examples of longing for a real or imagined past and expectations for the future found in correspondence, publications, and the process of musealization.

show abstract

Section: National Narratives and Nostalgizing The Pastmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Archaeology of the Imperial Past: “Nostalgizing” in the German and Turkish Museums of the Interwar Period

Willert

2024

Auc Studia Territorialia

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…1710) was promulgated restructuring the heritage scheme of Turkey. Until then, preservation law had been based on the 1906 Decree on Old Assets ( Asar-ı Atika Nizamnamesi ), which mainly concerned movable heritage (Dinler, 2018). With the new law, the guiding principles of historic preservation were finally defined based on “sites.” A draft of the law was already prepared in 1971.…”

Section: Enacting Urban Conservationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Formulation of historic residential architecture as a background to urban conservation

Dinler

2020

JCHMSD

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

PurposeThe paper explores how interpretations of vernacular traditional architecture played a significant role in the development of urban conservation practice in Turkey in the 1960s and 1970s. At the turn of the 20th century, the value of Ottoman historic residential architecture began to develop with the label of the Turkish House. At the turn of the 20th century, historic residential architecture of the Ottoman Empire gained a heritage value and labeled as the Turkish House. Thus, these houses became a part of a national heritage discourse, though their preservation only came to agenda in the early 1970s through preservation programs for Istanbul's waterfront mansions (yali). Turkey simultaneously adapted international heritage developments throughout the 1960s and the 1970s and introduced urban conservation both in practice and in theory to heritage management system of Turkey.Design/methodology/approachThe main research material is derived from the archives of the primary preservation council of Turkey that functioned from 1951 to 1983. The earlier works of the members of the council, journals of the period and urban projects are investigated to outline the complexities of urban conservation.FindingsThis paper explores how modernist efforts of the early 20th century framed traditional Ottoman architecture with the label “Turkish House.” In addition, it reveals how preserving the Turkish House was a major motivation that triggered early urban conservation attempts primarily along Istanbul's Bosporus shores.Originality/valueThe paper outlines dynamics of urban conservation. It outlines that urban conservation did not only emerge as a response to postwar context, but it was also a historic continuation of modernist understandings of “cultural heritage.”

show abstract

The Ancient City of Anazarbos and Its Significance as a World Heritage Site

Yüceer

Gülşen

Aydın

et al. 2021

Arch

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The concept of world heritage constitutes an important political, cultural and economic agenda in contemporary society, even though it has been criticized for being Eurocentric. In the case of developing countries such as Turkey, inclusion in the UNESCO World Heritage List helps generate much needed income through grants and tourism activity. There are currently eighteen sites in Turkey that are on the World Heritage List, and another eighty-three on the tentative list, the majority of which have been inscribed in the last decade. However, such an acceleration of attempts to promote sites as world heritage because of their attributes can also lead to conflicts about the values of the sites, project management, community enhancement and the degree to which important related studies are carried out. The ancient city of Anazarbos is one that exemplifies such a situation. The site's history as cultural and military cross-roads in the Cilicia region, and the potential to reveal those who successively inhabited and controlled it paved the way to its inclusion in the tentative list in 2014 by meeting the outstanding universal values. In this context, this study aims to provide an accurate background of in the hope of raising its status so that further RESEARCH

show abstract

The Knife’s Edge of the Present: Archaeology in Turkey from the Nineteenth Century to the 1940s

Cited by 5 publications

References 20 publications

The Archaeology of the Imperial Past: “Nostalgizing” in the German and Turkish Museums of the Interwar Period

The Archaeology of the Imperial Past: “Nostalgizing” in the German and Turkish Museums of the Interwar Period

Formulation of historic residential architecture as a background to urban conservation

The Ancient City of Anazarbos and Its Significance as a World Heritage Site

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About