Conservators in Istanbul are racing to save dozens of at-risk heritage sites in the wake of the deadliest earthquake in Turkey’s modern history, bracing for the likelihood of an even bigger disaster in a city straddling an active fault line.
But efforts to protect the treasures of the 8,000-year-old city were already complicated by the country’s restless politics, with the opposition-controlled municipal heritage department often at odds with cultural authorities in President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government. .
Istanbul’s Çamlıca Grand Mosque is one of some 35,000 registered heritage sites, more than half of which sit in a belt that would be hardest hit by an earthquake, according to former museum director Mahir Polat , who runs Miras Andrew Liu
The massive earthquake that struck near the Syrian border in February killed more than 50,000 people and destroyed half a million homes. Nearly 2,000 historic sites, from a medieval mosque to a Bronze Age settlement, have been damaged or destroyed.
Seismologists warn that an earthquake of a similar magnitude is all but inevitable within the next two decades in Istanbul, home to 16 million people and a huge repository of cultural heritage. The North Anatolian Rift extends just 20 km south of the historic peninsula, the UNESCO World Heritage-listed district dotted with palaces, mosques, churches, an aqueduct and more.
The city has around 35,000 registered heritage sites, and more than half are in a belt that would be hardest hit by an earthquake, says Mahir Polat, who heads Istanbul’s municipal heritage department, Miras.
“Istanbul’s earthquake keeps me awake at night,” he says. “We are not ready. The fundamental problem is the absence of anti-seismic regulations specifically for cultural heritage. We urgently need emergency protections just to do seismic reinforcement, because it is technically not possible for Istanbul to restore so many buildings in time.
The Istanbul earthquake keeps me awake at night. The problem is the lack of seismic regulations for heritage. It is not possible to restore so many buildings in time
Mahir Polat, municipal heritage service
A statement from the Ministry of Culture pointed to a 2021 update to the government’s disaster response plan as a framework for cultural heritage, which guided its rescue after the February earthquake. “We have been applying earthquake precautions for years in museums and structures affiliated with our ministry throughout the country, especially in Istanbul,” the statement said.
Polat, a former museum director, uses “triage” to describe his mission. The length of his lawsuit was thrown into doubt in December, when a court banned Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu from politics for allegedly insulting state election officials. The unprecedented ban was widely seen as an effort to curtail the popular politician’s potential aspirations to one day challenge Erdoğan. İmamoğlu and Polat remain in office pending a sentence appeal.
Heritage as a flashpoint
On Sunday, Erdoğan, who has ruled Turkey for two decades, won re-election after a polarized presidential election. İmamoğlu ran for vice president on the losing opposition ticket.
In Turkey’s culture wars, heritage is a flashpoint, with battle lines drawn on its most iconic landmarks. The election campaign was no exception: on the eve of a first round of voting, Erdoğan’s centre-left opponent, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, visited the grave of Mustafa Atatürk, the founder of the Turkish Republic secular, while Erdoğan, a conservative populist, prayed with thousands at Hagia Sophia, Christendom’s largest cathedral when it was built in the 6th century, then converted into a mosque during Ottoman rule before Atatürk turned it into a museum in 1934. In 2020, Erdoğan ignored Unesco’s objections and made Hagia Sophia a mosque once more.
Miras took an ecumenical approach to conservation, working through the city palimpsest. Among the more than 600 sites he has repaired since İmamoğlu was elected mayor in 2019 are the last existing Byzantine palace, an Armenian church and an Ottoman fortress.
Last month, he opened the restored Casa Botter, Istanbul’s first Art Nouveau building, which was built by Sultan Abdul Hamid II’s Dutch tailor, Jean Botter, in 1901. Adorned with wrought-iron flowers and reliefs of Demeter, he was abandoned on the main street. of İstiklal for decades. It now serves as a public art and design center. Thousands of people have visited Casa Botter during its restoration on tours organized by Miras to foster a connection between the people of Istanbul and their heritage.
“In this city of multicultural heritage, preserving it and integrating it into everyday life is the most important way to maintain it,” says Paolo Girardelli, professor of architectural history at Istanbul Boğaziçi University. “The municipality’s commitment to reusing sites for cultural purposes makes heritage more public, more visible, with the logic of preventing each historic place from becoming a café or a hotel. This commercialization destroys the urban and contextual heritage.
Elsewhere along İstiklal, historic buildings have been transformed into shopping malls. “The trend until recently was to save these places by keeping only the facades or by redoing them and rebuilding a large part of them. The Botter restoration is a good fix,” says Girardelli.
Polat accuses a “real estate mentality that replaces cultural heritage”. He says political tensions with Ankara, the country’s capital, have slowed or halted some of Miras’ efforts, including a two-month delay in securing state approval for the seismic renovation of the Underground Basilica Cistern, built in 532 AD by Emperor Justinian. The central government also took over properties under the administration of the municipality, such as Taksim Square and the Genoese-built Galata Tower.
As for the Ministry of Culture, its most significant efforts include the ten-year restoration of the 132-year-old Istanbul Archaeological Museum complex, which houses around 1.5 million objects. This month he unveiled a two-year renovation of the medieval Maiden Tower, a former lighthouse that is among Istanbul’s most beloved symbols.
Culture Minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy had warned that the structure was at risk of being destroyed in a storm, not to mention an earthquake, and the project was still plagued by the Turkish cultural conflict.
Restorers, including architect Han Tümertekin, removed shoddy 20th-century alterations to return the site to its early 19th-century iteration, while defending their work against false accusations from government critics that they had dismantled the tower all together.
But Tümertekin was philosophical about the outcry, attributing it to the passion with which the townspeople preserve their heritage. “There is only one Istanbul in the world,” he says.
