A new digital portal features a growing interactive map pinpointing cultural and religious sites of Turkey’s Armenian, Greek, Jewish and Syriac minorities.
Called Türkiye Kültürel Varlıkları Haritası” (Turkey’s Map of Cultural Heritages), the portal was launched by the Hrant Dink Foundation, which focuses on intercultural diversity, and is co-funded by the European Union and the Turkish government.
The home page shows a map of Turkey, which, the web site states
records Armenian, Greek, Syriac, and Jewish cultural heritage in order to make visible the multiple cultures and facets of different communities in Anatolia. Information on public buildings such as churches, schools, monasteries, cemeteries, synagogues, and hospitals has been gathered from primary and secondary sources, as well as from various archives, and has been shared through this online map.
The site stresses that the project is a work in progress, with more and more places still to be mapped and included.
On the map, in fact, the provinces of Turkey are colored in different shades, according to the density of buildings mapped so far in a given province, from 0 to nearly 700 — darker shades meaning that more sites have been mapped so far, lighter shades show provinces where fewer sites have been mapped.
The number of mapped buildings in the provinces can be seen by moving the cursor across the density map. Clicking on a province displays all of the buildings that are mapped in that province, clustering them according to their geographical distribution. Each circle represents a cluster, while the number written inside the circle represents the number of buildings in a given cluster. By clicking on the clusters, users can change the scale of the map and zoom in to a level of more detailed information on individual buildings.
There are at least 50 synagogues around Turkey, and dozens of Jewish cemeteries dating back centuries. The web site states:
Jewish cultural heritage in Turkey has been assumed to date as far back as to the aftermath of the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD, which corresponds to the (second) migration en masse of Jewish people westward, towards the Mediterranean. The identity of the users or owners of the buildings, such as Romaniote, Sephardic, Karaite, or Ashkenazi, has been specified when it was deemed important for the history of the buildings. Jewish cultural heritage may be studied in more detail in the future under these sub-categories in the future depending on the demand and feedback of the user of this map.
The portal does not provide exact geographic location for every site in order to protect them from treasure hunters and other threats.
Treasure hunting constitutes one of the most serious threats to cultural heritage in Turkey today. The accurate geographical coordinates, directions, and maps section and lot numbers of the buildings have been shared only when this information is known to have been previously publicized: in the book titled Kayseri with its Armenian and Greek Cultural Heritage, which comprises results of the field work in Kayseri that the Hrant Dink Foundation undertook in collaboration with the Association for the Protection of Cultural Heritage, on the websites of the Patriarchate of Turkey Armenians, Greek Community Foundations in Turkey, Turkish Jewish Community, Syriac Orthodox Patriarchal-Vicariate of Istanbul and Ankara,Syriac Orthodox Patriarchal-Vicariate of Adıyaman, Deyrulzafaran Monastery, as well as addresses of historical buildings that currently function as museums.
Geographical coordinates of other buildings on the map are approximate. At the current stage of the project, the directions and geographical specifics of these buildings will only be shared for academic and advocacy purposes through applications made to the Hrant Dink Foundation.
Click here to access the project
Hrant Dink Foundation home page
See article in the Daily Sabah
1 comment on “Turkey: New interactive digital portal to Jewish and other minorities’ cultural heritage”
The result of hopeful perseverance ,heart and soul by so an overwhelming rich variety of so called minorities…..
A tribute to the late journalist :the Dink Foundation.
Coordinates :no
Giving coordinates and the devastating consequences,Les Médecins sans Frontières,knowing all about it.
Call it naive,in my opinion it was trust.
Appreciate ,well it ought to be said,the greatness of JHE to publish also “sans frontières “!