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Title
New perspectives to save cultural heritage
Author
Altan, M. Orhan

CIP A 2003 XIX 11 ' International Symposium, 30 September - 04 October, 2003, Antalya, Turkey
will provide readers with basic information on the work, which
has been done until recently, and the planned further steps
towards a multiple approach for continuous monitoring of the
local changes and the development of preventive maintenance
programs.
Street scene in the old part of the town, Goreme
2. CURRENT SITUATION
UNESCO listed the unique area of Goreme-Cappadocia as both
a cultural and natural World Heritage Site in 1985. Over the last
decades modernization and mass tourism have brought
fundamental changes to Cappadocia’s environment. The region,
which had existed on a subsistent traditional farming economy
for many centuries, went through rapid changes. Tourism and
modern developments caused many of the young generation to
quit with the hard local traditional life and search for a new
future based on a modern infrastructure and the rise of the
tourism market. As there had only been about three pensions in
the village of Goreme in the year 1983 compared to almost
eighty nowadays, the traditional life in the village went through
dramatic changes including the loss of tradition and major
uncontrolled building activities.
Today it is very hard to find a traditional cave dwelling, which
is not transformed into a pension or a modernized house. Most
of these new built houses hardly respect to the old
characteristics of the local way of architecture. Building forms,
which had been different from Cappadocian village to village in
former times, are now replaced with standard construction and
decor elements without any sub regional differentiation. The
result is a rapid loss of the particular historical character of the
different Cappadocian villages, which sometimes originate from
different cultures and ethic groups, like the old orthodox Greek
groups for instance.
Even being protected by UNESCO and the Turkish Ministry of
Culture and Tourism as well as the Forest Ministry (national
park) till now no sustainable master plan has been developed
which is based on the requirements and needs of the region and
local people. Uncoordinated building activities both concerning
tourism and the urbanisation caused by general development are
hardly acceptable for a sustainable future of the region as a
World Heritage area. On governmental side, many old local
cave dwellers of the traditional parts of some Cappadocian
rock-villages have been removed to new subsidized houses
provided and planned for the local population without any
respect to their traditional needs as traditional farmers, (“afet"-
program of the 1970’s). Returning guest workers from Europe
introduced new ways of building ideas and prestigious life
style. General urbanisation, modernization and the extensive
growth of the tourism market next to new building materials
caused dramatic changes to the villages.
Unfortunately existing controlling instruments like the local
protection board of the Ministry of Culture, UNESCO and the
local authorities only have a small impact on saving the
traditional habitat. Architectural and other study groups from
Turkish and international universities reflected on some of the
spatial changes in limited projects but till now there is no
independent Site Commission involving responsible
professionals from different fields for continuous monitoring
and diagnose of the rapid changes happening in Cappadocia.
The decay of tradition, vernacular cultural wealth and the
unique Cappadocian building style is obvious all over the
region. Further more, even permitted projects done by
professional architects sometimes do not really respect the
micro cultural aspects of traditional regional housing and design
forms.
Till now activities by UNESCO concentrated mostly on the
restoration of Byzantine churches and the protection of the art
history of the region. Regional laws like the ban of future cave
carving have been introduced. So the vernacular tradition of
creating cave houses officially stopped. Today most of the new
regional construction is happening in a way, which is by no
means a proper answer to the ideas behind the claim of a World
Heritage Site. More and more traditional houses are getting
destroyed or sometimes redesigned in an often kitschy way.
Central courtyart and traditional Cappadocian
“kemer ” house in Goreme