Architectural Memorialization at Turkey’s ›Witness Sites‹: The Case of the Madimak Hotel

Abstract

In the past decade, Turkey has seen discourses of democratization and of ‘coming to terms’ with the atrocities of a recent period which was marked by a series of military interventions in politics. Concurrently, the sites where these atrocities took place have become subjected to projects for museumification, dedicated to the atrocities’ victims. Among such sites is the Madimak Hotel in Sivas, which was set on fire by a rioting mob on 2 July 1993, while individuals invited to the city for a culture festival were still inside. Building on an analysis of the Madimak Hotel, this paper investigates the architectural ways in which different political and social actors in Turkey relate to the ‘Sivas Massacre’. It finds that the case introduces a significant challenge both to the established theories employed, often uncritically, whilst discussing sites of atrocity, and to the focus of the ‘public’ debate in Turkey on museumification. Responding to this challenge, the paper develops the notion of ‘witness site,’ where the word ‘witness’ refers not only to the site’s past witnessing but also to its present day quality as a quasi-legal forum where evidence is elicited and testimonies are narrated.