Not so innocent amnesia

Murat Belge, opened the first session of the international symposium “Contemporary Perceptions of Byzantium,” organized by Istanbul Studies Center at Kadir Has University and co-sponsored by Koc University, on Saturday with a talk about historical amnesia in Turkey.

Belge, a professor at Istanbul's Bilgi University, explains that for a city, which used to be the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, Istanbul shows little of its Byzantine treasures. Unless one walks to Hagia Sophia it is hard to find what is left of Byzantium from before the Ottomans. These are sad remarks and facts on the ground are even less glorious and more shameful.

Many of the Byzantine archeological remains suffered a similar fate: discovered accidentally during city construction works, plundered overnight and included in the fundaments of the new construction. Such was the case with the catacombs discovered in Aksaray, potentially one of the greatest treasures, but “what do you do with it? You pour concrete on it,” remarked Belke. He questioned the fate of the ruins of the Byzantine palace just thirty steps away from the Four Seasons Hotel in Sultanahmet and the church near Incili Köşk on the way to Cankurtaran.

Although “Byzantine remains are no mystery […] but we are not curious about them, we let the dust accumulate above it so that we can forget it,” said Belge. Instead of conserving, researching and displaying the ruins, they disappear under roads and hotels. There are some good examples of protecting Byzantine heritage, such as by the new mayor of Istanbul’s Fatih district, but these are rather exceptions resulting from individual initiatives rather than as the result of compact policy.  

Ancient walls often become walls of gecekondu houses, which “lean innocently” against ancient remains, as in the end “there is one wall less to build.” Belge said that these people don’t attack history, they are “less offensive,” as they just “seek shelter from history,” simply trying to live “while the others enter with bulldozers and ruin it all.”

Belge explains, “The sad thing is that this is not ‘an innocent amnesia’ of contemporary Turkey.  There is an official policy of forgetting which is tied to the paranoia that some of us have, that we live in a country that can be claimed away.”

From this perspective, he said, “we should see that the city belonged to some other people in the past and take care of it and cherish it, then we would be more the owner of that place.”