DThe Gaziantep provincial governor doesn’t mince his words. “I saw the cultural assets from Anatolia in the museums of Berlin and Vienna. Those were bad moments,” says Kemal Çeber. “Our country is trying to bring these pieces back. I know what is being done to prevent that.” Then the politician from the ruling AKP party takes another swipe at America. “The United States has no archeology comparable to ours. Their country was built on the genocide of the indigenous people.”
The opening of the Turkish Institute of Archeology and Cultural Heritage at the end of October was actually supposed to be a celebration of intercultural dialogue. After all, the European Union made almost seven million euros available for this. The collaboration between Turkish and European archaeologists should be a focus. But relations are particularly tense in the days of the Gaza war. However, the demand for the return of cultural assets has long been part of the postcolonial discourse in Turkey. In his speech, EU Ambassador Nikolaus Meyer-Landrut emphasized what united them: “Early Christianity developed from here, and also early Islam.” For this reason, he could not imagine a better place for the institute. There are important archaeological and world heritage sites in the Gaziantep area, most notably Göbekli Tepe, a prehistoric meeting place.
Why does the EU support the institute?
The fact that the EU is supporting an archaeological institute in Gaziantep probably also has something to do with the 500,000 Syrians who have fled to the city in the past ten years. They make up more than a quarter of the population. That’s why a lot of European money flowed here, as part of the 2016 refugee agreement between the EU and Turkey. The local population doesn’t just see this as positive. She sees her city as a reception center for migrants that Europe wants to keep away. Mayor Fatma Şahin urged that the city of Europe should not be reduced to the refugee issue. Brussels understood this.
Şahin also speaks of churches, mosques and synagogues. The institute’s main building is a restored Armenian church from the 19th century that has “been through a lot,” says the mayor. A remarkable statement in Turkey, which still furiously denies the 1915 Armenian genocide. The scale of the building alone shows how large the Armenian community must have once been. But then Şahin doesn’t talk about the fate of the Armenians, but rather about the bullet holes in the facade, which presumably date from the time of the French military occupation.
A collective insult
The resolute mayor from the AKP maintains good relations with Europe. She is valued as an efficient administrator. But you don’t have to dig far to reveal the collective hurt that many Turks feel in view of the unfulfilled hopes of joining the EU. Şahin sees Angela Merkel as one of the main responsible for the failure of the accession process. The mayor says she rejected Turkey as an EU member because 90 percent of its citizens are Muslims. If anti-EU sentiment is now spreading in some places, it is “a reaction”.
The project in Gaziantep is not without controversy among Turkish archaeologists. For an institute that has national aspirations, there are usually only two locations in Turkey: Istanbul and Ankara. Gaziantep had to do considerable lobbying to convince the parliament in Ankara. Without the political influence of the former family minister Şahin, this would probably not have worked. There are still many doubters in the scientific community, as became apparent shortly before the opening at the annual Archaeology Day in Ankara.
Broad acceptance is “the biggest challenge,” says Felix Pirson, director of the German Archaeological Institute in Istanbul. Funding for the institute should not come at the expense of existing institutions. In Gaziantep, the research structures are not very developed compared to Ankara, Istanbul and Izmir. The new building is based on a model: the almost 200-year-old German institute.
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