The Crisis in Conservation: Istanbul's Gezi Park between Restoration and Resistance

Abstract

Among the urban revolts that arose in 2010–13, the Gezi Park protests in Turkey present a particular challenge to architectural history and conservation.1 In the case of the Turkish protests, the central issues were control over a symbolically important public urban space, Gezi Park in Istanbul's Taksim Square, and the power to shape architectural heritage and public memory. Two visions of architectural heritage clashed in Taksim: on one hand, the government's proposed “restoration” of a demolished Ottoman building, which would have both reified a neo-Ottoman political identity and served as a glittering shopping mall; and on the other, the desire of a broad coalition of citizens and civic organizations to conserve an urban public park and its five hundred plane trees. When public revulsion against police violence transformed Gezi in June 2013 with massive demonstrations and millions in seventy-nine cities across Turkey joined in protest, the Gezi Resistance evolved from a rejection of the government's authoritarian vision for heritage restoration and urban renovation into a rejection of the governing bloc's cultural hegemony generally. It is worth recounting the crisis in conservation in Istanbul's Taksim Square and the culture wars in the years leading up to the Gezi events, a troubled triangle of public architectural heritage, government plans, and civil resistance. In the aftermath of the Gezi events, and of 15 July 2016, when progovernment citizens took to the streets to thwart a military coup, we are left with sobering questions. What are the limits of public participation in architectural conservation and urban historic preservation? Can a coalition of citizens and civic organizations preserve and sustain public architectural heritage against the will of the government, in defiance of the prerogative of its bureaucracy, and brave the violence visited upon the people by the state's police? What happens when the fate …