ARAŞTIRMA
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ARAŞTIRMA
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Doç. Dr. Mehmet TUNÇER (*)
Turkey, being a land where rich civilisations with pasts reaching back into thousands of years have flourished, leads among those countries with great universal responsibilities on the protection of the cultural heritage of humanity. The importance of preserving the cultural heritage cannot be limited only to the aim of introducing our past values to future generations. Using the leftover from the past as the most important resource in creating the future is a momentous necessity. It is becoming significant for nations to integrate their cultural identities with their new living environments. Modern creations in architecture and urban planning that are realised with no consideration for the national and historical values hasten alienation. Preserving the cultural heritage of different cultures with the same care and respect will help the feelings of peace and brotherhood take root in the world under globalization, while providing a propelling force in the development of a rich and multi-coloured cultural mosaic with the interaction of different cultures with each other. To date, 44 406 immobile cultural assets have been declared in Turkey, with 2857 sites including 2425 archaeological sites, 269 natural sites, 146 urban sites and 17 historical sites (1).
Turkey also has had its role in the intensifying efforts on international platforms since the 1970s. According to the statements of the “Agreement on the Preservation of the Cultural and Natural Inheritance of the World”, which Turkey has accepted along with the other member countries of UNESCO, the involved governments have guaranteed the preservation of the cultural and historical valuables within their registration. From within our country, Pamukkale, Göreme, Kapadokya, istanbul, Bogazköy, Mount Nemrut, Xanthos-Letoon, Patara and Divrigi Ulu Mosque and Darüssifa have been included in the List of World Cultural Heritage. The “Agreement on the Preservation of the European Architectural Heritage” has been put into effect by the Law dated 13.04.1989 and Numbered 3534. According to the Agreement on the Preservation of the Mediterranean against Pollution (The Barcelona Pact), 17 sites from our country have also been included for preservation among the 100 historical sites of common importance in the Mediterranean (2).
The first opposition to the Western countries carrying away cultural valuables to their own lands with a preservation system based on private properties was with the Asar-i Atika Nizamnamesi (Regulations on Antique Monuments).
Afterwards, the style of preserving the cultural heritage also changed with the Ottoman Empire contacting the West with the Gülhane Hatti Hümayunu (Gülhane Royal Decree). In this period, the whole Empire had become the market of the industrial and trade bourgeoisie of the West; the preservation of the cultural heritage was continued with no real understanding, with a museum-based style; and even the preservation of monuments with even monumental value were unsuccessful.
Following 1923, a style of preservation parallel to the efforts of settling down the economy of the land, that is, to the changes in the new socio-conomic structure, was continued with certain principles being laid down. In the year 1944, the I. Advisory Committee have indicated the need for the preservation of old monuments along with their building plans. As in the rest of the world, legal arrangements and organisations have been created in Turkey well for the preservation of the cultural and historical environment; and effort on this subject is ongoing.
Our land is quite rich in cultural and natural valuables. And the preservation of this richness is possible only through law. The most important laws and regulations on this point, which have made possible the creation of a Code of Old Monuments, are the 1710 numbered “Law on Historic Monuments” put into effect on May 3, 1973, which follows the “Asari Atika Nizamnamesi” dated April 10, 1322 (A.D.1904), and the “Law on the Preservation of Cultural and Natural Assets” dated July 21, 1983 and numbered 2863, and the variation of this law numbered 3386.
The search for regulations fitting the features of cultural variables and the conditions changing in time necessitates new legal arrangements (that replace one another). Therefore, let us examine briefly the two main regulations that carry the force of law that have been created since the year 1923, that is, the declaration of the Republic.
The goal of this law, was the preservation of old monuments and the prevention of old work smuggling and trade. This law considers all mobile and immobile items related to science, religion, culture and fine arts, all Archaeological and Etnographical monuments, and all material and documents related to the history of art to be part of its context.
The Old Monuments Law, either extensively limits or eliminates altogether the possession rights of individuals, underground or above ground, on science, religion and fine arts belonging to prehistoric or historic periods.
Immobile possessions could be preserved best not by exhibiting them, but integrating them into daily life and making them live. To that end, especially the efforts and wishes of individuals who are aware of this point should be supported in a controlled manner instead of being hindered.
II. 2. “Law on the Preservation of Cultural and Natural Assets”, Numbered 2863 and Implementations (4)
In the “General Motivation” part of the Law Sketch, it is emphasised that Turkey leads among those countries with great universal responsibilities on the protection of the cultural heritage of humanity. The need for a “Preservation Policy” that includes Central and Local Administrations is stated, while the “Local Administrations” are either included very slightly or excluded altogether in the sketch. Although the need of establishing a sufficient legal, organisational and financial infrastructure has been mentioned, the organisations that were created seem to be leaning more towards control and documentation, like the “Centre for Preservation Training, Research and Documentation” or the “Application Technical Control Units”. On the contrary, this organisation is more required to aim at solving the daily problems of people living in sites about applications (relevation, construction, creating restoration projects, technical and financial problems of repairs).
Although the “Fund for Preserving Cultural and Natural Values” seem to be a positive prospect, the fact that it is going to be allocated centrally gives rise to the concern that political goals might enter the game. The parts that require priority and haste are the shores, touristic regions and metropolitan city centres undergoing rapid urbanisation; those points experience the damage to cultural and natural values very quickly and intensely.
As can be observed, the concept of an archaeological site carries great weight. Therefore, it is deemed necessary to make decisions on organisation, financing and application/control in archaeological sites, and to emphasise their importance through laws and regulations. Novel and effective policies should be developed towards excavation and research regulations, and the planning and arrangements of archaeological areas. The personnel in existing museums and ruins should be supported and made more effective.
In the preservation and improvement of natural sites, success can be achieved in application through the co-operation and synchronisation of the Ministry of Environment and the Prime-Ministry Specially Protected Areas Department of Environmental Preservation, along with the support and involvement of local administrations.
As for the Urban Sites, it is of vital importance to form “Local Preservation Committees” and to follow through applications under the control of the Preservation Committees. Decisions made and plans and projects created can be put into realisation only through this course of action. It is very important not to think of the urban sites separately from the urban whole, and to give the local administrations, which serve the city in all aspects, in this attempt, too. A “Preservation Fund”, much like the “Mass Housing Fund”, has been created by the law. Apart from this fund, it is essential to put local and voluntary resources in action with the participation of local administrations, of landlords and tenants in sites, and of civil social organisations (foundations, companies, societies, co-operatives, banks, political parties etc.). Moreover it is important to transfer resources, loans, presents and the like from organisations and associations abroad.
Especially the work on repairs of single buildings and arrangements of infrastructure and the environment should be carried out with the organisation of local administrations and under the control of committees. Repairs should not be made on buildings within the historical pattern before infrastructure monuments and environmental arrangements have been completed.
Wide-ranging solutions should be worked out that, while providing control and setting financial penalties, also cares about the social dimensions of the problem, work towards the solution of the residence and land question and keeps the increase in land rants under check.
The local administrations should be made aware and activated in preservation by supporting them technically and financially (5).
III. CURRENT POLICIES, APPLICATIONS AND PROBLEMS ABOUT THE PRESERVATION OF THE HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL ENVIRONMENT IN TURKEY (6)
“If my observations and judgements are accurate, especially urban preservation is impossible in Turkey through the methods indicated by the teachings of orthodox preservation. We should not fool ourselves by making examples of back alley, weak, random applications. The Antalya Harbour, the Soğukçeşme Road or a region that was conserved without preservation in Safranbolu could not erase the memories of destruction of İstanbul, İzmir, Kütahya, Kayseri, Urfa, Erzurum, Gaziantep, Konya, Antakya and innumerable cities and towns.”
Prof. Dr. Doğan KUBAN (7)
As Dr. Kuban remarks, it is not possible to state that the preservation policies for the historical and cultural environment in Turkey have achieved their goals to date. Particularly the immigration from rural to urban areas and rapid urbanisation following 1950, the residence- and tourism- aimed second wave of shore plundering following 1980, and the immigration phenomena from the Eastern and South-Eastern Regions for security and economical reasons have reduced the balances of the cities, which were formed over hundreds of years, to tatters. The illegal building wave, that first began at the fringes of cities (gecekondu / squatters), has gradually suffocated the rest of the cities like a cancer through building pardons and has become one of the main urban problems today.
The phenomena summarised below have appeared because of the rapid urban growth:
· Plans being prepared with no intention of preservation but even just the opposite goal, the goal of annihilation; like the making of roads not in harmony with the traditional pattern under the cover name “building”, or building rights being increased,
· According to those plans, new buildings being created in towns that are not in harmony with their traditional environment, with base areas and heights conflicting with the pattern, by destroying the traditional urban patterns in cities, to serve speculative ends,
· The stopping of old planning decisions by declarations of sites, leading to the further phenomena of bad maintenance, non-preservation, aging, desertion and ruination in traditional patterns and historical urban centres because of the insufficiency of planning and application efforts towards preservation,
· Transport and parking problems that gradually rise because of excessive buildings and population density,
· The social transformation, squatter development and social-ruination-region properties that arise in traditional patterns due to the possession holders deserting the area.
While the problems outlined above differ from region to region, they are observed to be general problems. The in-migration rate, the potential for development, the quality of the traditional pattern (building materials and the relation of the pattern to newly developing parts of the city), the potential for tourism and the approaches of local administrations in every individual city causes variations in the preservation of the historical and cultural environment in each city. By the Law numbered 2863, “Preservation-Aimed Plans” should be prepared by the Municipalities. However, when needed, Municipalities can obtain technical and financial aid from the Ministry of Culture. In some cities (İstanbul, Ankara, İzmir, Bursa, Antalya etc.) the preservation-aimed planning efforts have been and still are carried out by the units created by the local administrations within their own bodies. During these planning efforts, the local administrations are getting preservation-aimed plans by from private firms or project competitions since they themselves are technically insufficient.
As examples:
· Ankara / Ulus Historical Urban Centre Preservation-Improvement Project Competition,
(The Greater Municipality of Ankara),
· Ankara Citadel Preservation and Improvement Plan Project Competition,
(Altındağ Municipality & The Ministry of Culture),
· Antalya / The Citadel Gate Arrangement Contest (Antalya Municipality),
· Gaziantep / Inns Region Urban Design Contest (Gaziantep Municipality),
could be indicated.
The Ministry of Culture carries out the functions of detection and registration (recognition and recording) of traditional patterns and archaeological areas and the determination of the boundaries of sites since the early 1970s (The Law of Old Monuments - 1710, and the Law on the Preservation of Cultural and Natural Valuables - 2863). Efforts on the planning of these areas could not be effective until the late 1980s except a few special instances (Cappadoccia, Pamukkale, Bodrum etc.). In late 1980s the Ministry of Culture took a great leap, albeit late, and started the preservation-aimed planning monuments (using the highest-bidder method), which had been left to the Local Administrations by Law.
There are projects which have been completed and which are still ongoing through these biddings. However the completion of these projects take too long periods of time, and some have been brought to court by the Municipality or the property owners. Since some of the areas of preservation of the historical environment are included in the Special Environmental Protection Areas (Patara, Xanthos, Pamukkale, Dalyan, Göcek etc.) a multi-headed method of planning and application management is in question. Thus, the authority to plan and order plans in these areas is on the Directorate of The Specially Protected Areas, which is under the Ministry of Environment, and the authority of approval about the application in archaeological and urban sites in these areas is on the Ministry of Culture and the High Council of Preserving Cultural and Natural Values, which is supposed to be independent (!), and on the Region Councils. When the local administrations (prefect, municipalities, village identities), who are the real owners of the region, also join in the opposition between these two entities, a chaos hard to solve results. There are interminable correspondences about who should make the preservation-aimed plan, who should approve it and which stage should be applied by whom. The best examples of this situation are the current applications in Pamukkale and Patara. A detailed examination of each of these examples reveals the sad, even tragicomical condition of preservation policies today.
Even
this is not the end of the problems. What one organisation does, the other dislikes;
hence the preservation areas are now much like blackboards — written on, erased,
rewritten on. This way, the already-limited resources are being wasted as well.
III. 1. Problems in Archaeological Sites and Suggestions on Solutions
· The boundaries of archaeological sites are not fixed and they change constantly. By decrees of the preservation councils, shifts and alterations are being made among I., II. and III. Degree archaeological sites, and this leads to the idea of decisions being changeable among people. Thus, the boundary declarations should be made once, supported by scientific research, and no changes should be made about these boundaries without the support of new data, documentation and findings.
· Environmental control is not complete in some of the archaeological sites, entries are not under regulations and complete chaos reigns, leading to unlawful excavations and theft of old monuments. Environmental control should be enforced, and fences should be constructed around archaeological sites, ruins, hills and tumuluses, and guards should be set for the important ones.
· Planning aiming to the preservation of archaeological sites is either insufficient or non existent. Preservation-aimed planning attempts of antique towns like Bergama (Pergamon), Perge, Pamukkale (Hierapolis), Efes (Ephesus), Patara etc. have only been taken into consideration in recent years. These planning monuments should be completed by scientific methods as soon as possible, by setting aside the political and inter-organisational rivalries. Priorities should be detected and planning and investments should be directed accordingly.
· Control and preservation mechanisms that are left to the local administrations are insufficient due to financial and technical impossibilities, the Ministry of Culture cannot supply the necessary control or support. The control, maintenance and repair of all areas from the centre is impracticable. Hence, local offices should be formed and these offices, which are to be equipped technically and financially, should be made to provide effective planning, project creation and applications.
· The arrangements of entrance points, tour routes, rest and service points in archaeological areas and ruins are often very insufficient, primitive, and far from scientific. Such inadequacy is encountered in many of the ruins that are in use for tourism purposes. Therefore, firstly model designs (WCs, entrance points, resting points, souvenir sale points etc.) and, following that, designs specific to the architectural properties of the region should be obtained and applied. Obtaining these designs through contests could lead to significant results.
· Prevention of illegal excavations, reclaiming old monuments that have been smuggled abroad, controlling excavations and exhibiting the found monuments, these are each heavy and effort-claiming problems. Improvement of existing museums and efforts towards the exhibition of antique towns as open-air museums are matters that require the cooperation of the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Tourism. Such matters could not be addressed very fully in the limited time available for this present work.
III. 2. Problems in Urban Sites and Suggestions on Solutions
· Problems of archaeological sites such as boundary changes, licensing/unlicensing, lack of planning and lack of control are encountered in urban sites as well.
· Moreover, the rapid population growth and urbanisation, the phenomenon of from-rural-to-urban immigration, unplanned growth of the cities, and land speculation in our country affect the urban pattern, which has to be preserved, extremely adversely. Historical town centres and traditional urban patterns that are at hearts of towns are affected by the rapid urban growth, the increase in density and old buildings being pulled down and new, multi-story ones being erected; the traditional urban patterns are being destroyed in spite of all the efforts and legal restrictions.
· The delay in considering preservation at the urban scale (at pattern scale) has resulted in the loss of the picturesque view of many of our towns, like İstanbul, Bursa, Edirne, İzmir, and Kayseri. Although delayed, efforts on planning and project-preparation for preservation have spread wider after the 1980s. Following the authority being passed on to the local administrations, many local administrations have started to stand up for their towns, embarking upon preservation-aimed planning efforts.
· It is not possible to claim that these efforts have been sufficient. However, it can be said that a certain consciousness for the environment has emerged, also with the influence of tourism. It is an indication of how large the delay was that the Ministry of Culture initiated the preservation-aimed planning tasks by the method of the highest-bidder from the beginning of the 1990s. The important thing is not to prepare preservation plans, but to take certain organisational and financial precautions related to their application and to apply them.
· It is not quite possible to hope for the achievement of this with the current structure of the Ministry of Culture, which is constantly dependent upon the ever-changing political decisions. It is extremely sad that in a medium of “CHAOS”, which is created through demoting members of the Council of Preservation, exiling them to other locations, or through assigning non-expert people ignorant in “Scientific Preservation” to their positions, decisions that look after destroyers and speculators are spreading far and wide.
It is presented with the following suggestions, which could be named “Sustainable Preservation Policies”:
1. Historical environments and traditional residence patterns should not be regarded only as our cultural variables, but in accordance with the concept of “Sustainable Development”, as housing stocks too.
2. In that aspect, planning and projects should be carried out that contain not only preservation but also improvement and renovation.
3. The “Regulations” developed by the Mass Housing Department until 1997, which was prepared with the approach that regards traditional urban patterns as residential patterns/ housing stocks should be applied at once.
4. The heavy, bureaucratic, slow-moving, problematic, unproductive, technically weak aspects of the Ministry of Culture have to be improved. Instead of policies that change daily according to politics (according to the Minister, the Representative or the General Manager), new long-term policies that are determined according to the resources and priorities of the land should be created and applied. The Preservation Councils and Bureau Management’s that are the local units of the Ministry of Culture should be released from their present passive, heavy structures which are ineffective in addressing problems and delay preservation, to be made into active, technically- and financially-equipped, effective mechanisms.
5. Many-headedness in the laws and the organisational structure on the issue of preservation should absolutely be prevented. Reconsidering the allocation of authority and responsibility, a single “Law of Urban and Environmental Preservation” should be created.
6. Policies of preservation- and improvement-on-the-spot should be advocated by increasing the technical and financial support on local administrations and controlling their services.
7. Informing the people of the region about the historical environment and giving them an awareness of it, and thus assuring their positive aid and involvement in the matter of preservation is regarded as the most important means of preservation. It is extremely important to teach about, introduce and sow a love for the cultural diversity and cultural valuables in the land starting at very early ages.
As a conclusion, it can be said that the point arrived at after decades of disregard and looting on the matter of the preservation of historical and cultural valuables is the point of losing, if not all, most of these valuables. The local and central administrations, which are supposed to prevent this, are observed to be unequal to the task. It is our belief that the duty required of every educated person is to actively participate in the efforts of preservation of cultural and historical valuables.
* Ass. Prof. in Urban Conservation, Fac. Of Arch., Dep. Urban & Regional Planning, Gazi University, Ankara, TURKEY
SOURCES
1. INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF CONCERN ON THE HISTORICAL
ENVIRONMENT, C. Erder, 1971, Ankara.
2. PRESERVATION OF THE HISTORICAL AND NATURAL ENVIRONMENT,
TMMOB Chambers of Architects Publications, 1979, İstanbul.
3. LAW OF HISTORIC MONUMENTS, NUMBERED 1710 Comments-Examinations,
1976, İstanbul.
4. REGULATIONS ON IMMOBILE CULTURAL AND NATURAL ASSETS, T.R.
Ministry of Culture, 1996, Ankara.
5. WRITINGS ON THE PRESERVATION OF HISTORICAL ENVIRONMENT,
M. TUNÇER, Lecture Notes, 1996, Ankara.
6. This section has been prepared with the aid of the unpublished Doctorate Dissertation by M.
TUNÇER, “Policies on the Preservation of Historical Environment for Sustainable
Development: Ankara, Bergama, Şanlıurfa”, Ankara University, Faculty of Political
Science, Department of Public Administration and Political Science, Urban and
Environmental Sciences, 1995.
7. KUBAN, D., 1993, “Could There Be a Policy of Preservation Specific to Türkiye?”,
1. Colloquium on Urban Preservation and Renovation Applications, April 7-8 1993, MSU,
Fac. of Architecture, Dept. of Urban and Regional Planning.