UNESCO’s decision not to remove Istanbul from its World Heritage List is a win for the city, but should not excuse complacency in protecting its historical sites, experts said after the decision was made public Friday.
“Having not been excluded from the UNESCO World Cultural Heritage List, after all the mistakes we have made, once more shows Istanbul’s value,” Tayfun Kahraman, chairman of the Istanbul Chamber of Urban Planners, told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review on Friday, adding that the decision came as a surprise to him, but was very good news for Turkey.
“It is time now to try to avoid any similar problems at the historical sites and be more careful,” he said, adding that care had to be shown not only for the historical sites, but the surrounding areas as well, so that the city would not be subject to future exclusion from the cultural heritage list.
“Had the [UNESCO] committee decided otherwise, it would have opened the way to further depredation of the historical sites,” Necmi Karul, chair of the Istanbul Archaeologists Association, told the Daily News. Unlike Kahraman, Karul said the association had been expecting the decision and that UNESCO had made the right choice because its mission was not to punish cities.
Since 2006, UNESCO has repeatedly said Istanbul’s historical sites have not been appropriately conserved according to international criteria. During the organization’s 34th Assembly in Brazil, however, its World Heritage Committee voted unanimously to keep Istanbul on the UNESCO World Cultural Heritage List. The decision will be officially announced Tuesday, according to an Anatolia news agency report Friday.
Though they said the decision was a positive one for Turkey’s image and its people’s psychology, the experts stressed that the need had not ended for the relevant authorities to take action to improve the situation of the threatened historical sites.
There is still much UNESCO itself could do to aid such an effort, Karul said, suggesting that the international body could press Turkish authorities more strongly to protect historical sites and fulfill the country’s obligations under international agreements it has signed, particularly the European Convention for the Protection of Archaeological Heritage, signed in Malta in 1992.
A lack of awareness or education can contribute to the damage to historical sites, Karul said, noting the case of the former Roma neighborhood of Sulukule, which has been torn down, as well as the fact that people are trying to build structures just four or five meters from Istanbul’s ancient city walls.
As part of its decision to keep Istanbul on the list, the World Heritage Committee is requiring Turkey to immediately meet some obligations, including conducting an independent impact-assessment analysis on whether the project to build a metro line over the Golden Horn (Haliç), will spoil the view from the historical peninsula, and especially that of Süleymaniye Mosque.
Kahraman told the Daily News that the Haliç metro project and a legal change to allow the building of car tunnels under the Bosphorus Strait are the two main concerns for which Turkey must find a solution immediately.
“[Such projects] must be brought to the required levels [by UNESCO] and cancelled,” he said.
Karul of the Archaeologists Association disagreed, saying canceling existing projects was not always an optimal solution for the city. He said the relevant authorities had to be very careful when considering applications for projects to examine any possibility that they might harm the city’s historical sites or their views. “There are gaps in the existing laws as well, and what is more crucial, these laws are not always properly implemented,” he said.
Regarding the Haliç metro project, Karul said the project had to be revised, but since some investment has already been made for its construction, it would be better to find a solution that would satisfy both parties instead of canceling the project altogether.
He added that establishing pilot projects at certain historical sites would be an effective model for both the relevant authorities and Turkish citizens as to how such sites have to be preserved, and as a way to show the world that Turkey has been able to protect its historical values in Istanbul and throughout the country.
Source: Hurriyet [July 30, 2010]