Istanbul Possible Removal from Unesco World Heritage List
Tourist sites in Istanbul may be deleted from UNESCO’s World Heritage list and added to the United Nation’s endangered heritage list because of a lack of care and dialogue around such tourist sites as the Süleymaniye Mosque, the Hagia Sophia and the Hippodrome. In the following news article, Isil Egrikavuk writing for the Hurriyet Daily News in Istanbul explains further:
Some of Istanbul’s historical treasures, such as the 6th century Hagia Sophia and the 16th century Süleymaniye Mosque, again face the threat of being removed from UNESCO’s World Heritage List. Experts point to the continuous absence of a substantial operation plan for the area and the lack of dialogue among state institutions
Istanbul’s historical sights, from the ancient Hippodrome to Ottoman-era mosques, are among its biggest tourist draws, but the city’s negligence of its past has it again risking relegation to the United Nations’ endangered heritage list.
“UNESCO officials were shocked when they saw that so many buildings under protection were either damaged or gone,” architect Korhan Gümüş, the urban-practices director for the Istanbul 2010 European Capital of Culture agency, told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review in an interview this week. “They made a warning about removing Istanbul from the list but Turkish officials asked for time to work things out. Yet things haven’t changed; they have even gotten worse.”
So bad, in fact, that if a June 1 report by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is accepted during the group’s July 25 to Aug. 3 meeting in Brazil, Istanbul’s historic peninsula – the site of 2,000 years of political, religious and artistic history – will be dropped from UNESCO’s World Heritage List and placed on its List of World Heritage in Danger.
“Most likely the report will be approved and Istanbul will be removed from the World Heritage List,” said Cevat Erder, an architecture professor specializing in historic preservation at Middle East Technical University. “It would be a shame for us. All of the places on that list have prestige. I am sorry we will lose that,” Erder said.
“If the same thing happened in Rome, the government would have to resign, let alone the municipality,” Gümüş said. “But what is more important is not the final decision. It is the fact that Istanbul has become a city like this.”
Istanbul faced the same threat in 2004 when UNESCO officials reported that sites exhibiting traditional architectural values were not being administered and protected properly. According to Gümüş, the U.N. group had previously identified as problems Istanbul’s lack of an administrative strategy for its historical areas and the lack of professional planning for their protection and renovation. The 25-kilometer-long walls that once delineated the city limits are a case in point.
One of the features designated on the World Heritage List, Istanbul’s city walls were damaged as the result of a careless restoration project. In 2006, UNESCO warned the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality that it should continue with the restoration only if it abided by the wall’s original construction. But once again the restoration project was opened for bidding, which according to the law ensures that the project will go to the bidder that says it can do the work most cheaply.
