The race to protect Istanbul’s heritage from another earthquake

Istanbul’s restoration guards are racing to protect dozens of endangered heritage sites in the aftermath of Turkey’s deadliest earthquake in modern history, and bracing for the possibility of an even greater catastrophe in a city on an active fault line.

But efforts to protect the city’s 8,000-year-old treasures have already been complicated by the country’s fractious politics, with the opposition-controlled municipal heritage department often at odds with cultural authorities from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government.

Istanbul’s Çamlıca Grand Mosque is one of about 35,000 registered heritage sites, more than half of which sit in a belt that would be badly damaged by the earthquake, according to former museum director Mahir Polat, who runs Meras Andrew Liu.

The massive earthquake that hit 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 similar magnitude is inevitable within the next two decades in Istanbul, home to 16 million people and a huge storehouse of cultural heritage. The North Anatolian Rift extends 20 km south of the historical peninsula, an area included in the UNESCO World Heritage List dotted with palaces, mosques, churches, an aqueduct and more.

The city has about 35,000 registered heritage sites, and more than half of them are located in a belt that would be hardest hit by the earthquake, says Maher Polat, who runs the heritage department of the Istanbul municipality, Meras.

“The Istanbul earthquake keeps me up at night,” he says. “We are not ready. The main issue is the lack of earthquake regulations specifically for cultural heritage. We urgently need emergency protection measures just to do seismic reinforcements, because it is not technically possible for Istanbul to restore these many buildings in time.”

Istanbul earthquake keeps me up at night. The issue is the lack of earthquake regulations for heritage. These many buildings could not be restored in time

Maher Polat, Department of Municipal Heritage

A statement from the Ministry of Culture referred to the 2021 update of the government’s disaster action plan as a framework for cultural heritage, which guided the rescue operation after the February earthquake. “We have been implementing earthquake precautions for years in museums and facilities of our ministry across the country, especially in Istanbul,” the statement said.

Polat, a former museum director, uses “sorting” to describe his mission. How long he could last was in doubt in December, when an Istanbul mayor’s court banned Ekrem Imamoglu from politics for allegedly insulting the country’s election officials. The unprecedented ban was widely seen as an attempt to curb the popular politician’s potential aspirations to one day challenge Erdoğan. Imamoglu and Polat remained in office while the verdict was being appealed.

Heritage as a flashpoint

On Sunday, Erdogan, who has ruled Turkey for two decades, was re-elected after a polarized presidential election. Imamoglu ran for vice president on the losing opposition ticket.

In Turkey’s culture wars, heritage is a flashpoint, with battle lines drawn across its most iconic monuments. The election campaign was no exception: the day before the first-round vote, Erdogan’s center-left opponent, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, visited the tomb of Mustafa Ataturk, founder of the secular Turkish republic, while Erdogan, a conservative populist, prayed with thousands. In the Hagia Sophia, the largest cathedral in Christendom when it was built in the sixth century, it was then converted into a mosque during Ottoman rule before Ataturk made it a museum in 1934. In 2020, Erdogan ignored UNESCO’s objections and made the Hagia Sophia a mosque again.

Miras has taken an ecumenical approach to preservation, working across the city’s palimpsest. Among the more than 600 sites restored since Imamoglu was elected mayor in 2019 are a last existing Byzantine palace, an Armenian church and an Ottoman castle.

Last month, Casa Potter opened, Istanbul’s first Art Nouveau building restored by Sultan Abdulhamid II’s Dutch tailor, Jan Potter, in 1901. Decorated with wrought-iron flowers and Demeter reliefs, it sits deserted on the main street. decades of independence. It now operates as a public art and design center. Thousands of people visited Casa Botter during its restoration on tours organized by Miras to strengthen the bonds between the people of Istanbul and their heritage.

“In this city with a multicultural heritage, preserving it and making it part of daily life is the most important way to preserve it,” says Paolo Girardelli, professor of architectural history at Bogazici University, Istanbul. “The municipality’s commitment to reusing sites for cultural purposes makes heritage more general, more visible, with the logic of avoiding the transformation of every historical place into a café or hotel. This trade destroys urban and contextual heritage.”

Elsewhere along Istiklal Street, historic buildings have been converted into shopping malls. “The trend until recently was to salvage these spaces by preserving only the facades or by largely remodeling and rebuilding them. Restoring Botter is a good patch,” says Girardelli.

Polat blames “the mentality of real estate replacing cultural heritage”. He says political tensions with Ankara, the country’s capital, have slowed or halted some of Miras’ efforts, including the two-month delay in obtaining state approval for the seismic retrofit of the underground basilica cistern, built by Emperor Justinian in AD 532. The central government also seized property belonging to the municipal administration, such as Taksim Square and the Galata Tower constructed in Genoa.

As for the Culture Ministry, its most important endeavor includes restoring Istanbul’s 132-year-old archaeological museum complex, which houses an estimated 1.5 million artifacts, for ten years. This month, it unveiled a two-year renovation of the medieval Maiden’s 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, let alone an earthquake, and the project remains a prey to cultural conflict in Turkey.

The restorers, including architect Han Tomertken, removed shoddy 20th-century alterations to bring the site back to its early 19th-century iteration, while defending their work against false accusations by government critics that they had pieced the tower together.

But Tomerteken was philosophical about the protest, and it’s due to the passion with which the townspeople guard their heritage. “There is only one Istanbul in the world,” he says.

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