Heritage Policies and Public Memory between Continuity and Rupture: The Treatment of the Ottoman-era Architecture in Greece in the Aftermath of the Population Exchange

Abstract

This paper examines the heritagization of Ottoman-era architecture in Greece from the Balkan Wars until the interwar years. Investigating the impact of the Lausanne Treaty, it explores continuities and ruptures in the dominant ideological motifs, policies and social practice of treating Ottoman-era architectural vestiges. Public debates on the meanings and roles of these vestiges are analyzed at the intersection of ideology with material stakes pertaining to spatial management. Moreover, attempts to include Ottoman-era architecture in national and local heritage narratives are seen as a means of claiming the consolidating state’s cultural sovereignty, and as indicators of an ambivalent public affect towards the Ottoman past and official institutions. The paper thus elucidates understudied aspects of making the Ottoman heritage in the light of structural geopolitical rearrangements in the Eastern Mediterranean.