Kent Kimliği Açısından Önemli Bir Ermeni Kilise Mimarisinin İncelenmesi: Digor Khtzkong Manastırı

Abstract

Cultural heritage enables us to have information about past civilizations that form the identity of the built environment in a residential area. While cultural heritage structures reflect the material properties and techniques of the period they belong to, the architectural styles they adopted, and the level of civilization, they express the societies they belong to and the way of life of the societies, world view, management style and religious structure. For this reason, the sustainability of cultural heritage is important for the preservation of the local identity of societies and the continuity of cultural values. However, historical buildings such as mosques, churches, monasteries, chapels, synagogues, madrasas, inns, baths and castles, which reflect the identity of different regions, were built in masonry. Masonry structures, on the other hand, are not resistant to natural disasters such as earthquakes. 
 In this context, it is aimed to examine the monastery, which consists of five churches from the Armenian churches in the Eastern Anatolia Region of Turkey. This monastery is Khıdskonk Monastery, which consists of the Churches of St. Karapet, Virgin Mary (Surp Asdvadzdzin), St. Stefanos, St. Krikor and St. Sarkis. The churches, which differ in terms of culture and architecture, are important in terms of having the first church plan typologies. The problem of the study is that the remains of four of the five churches that were built in the same region and that were recently built, and that only one church is partially preserved. Based on this problem, it is aimed to document and archive these churches, which are important for the Kars region, and to examine their plan typologies. In this context, the relationship between earthquake damage and typologies was investigated and evaluations were made for the churches surveyed in the sample area. As a result, by emphasizing the importance of cities for their identities, suggestions were made for the protection of cultural heritage.