Recent Publication Highlights Complexities of Uncovering the History of the Medieval City of Ani
Special for the Armenian Weekly
“Preserving the Medieval City of Ani: Cultural Heritage between Contest and Reconciliation,” an article by Dr. Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh, was published last month in the highly competitive international “Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians.” Watenpaugh is a co-chair of the Department of Art and Art History at the University of California, Davis (UCD), where she specializes in urban and architectural art history in Islamic societies. The article, in Watenpaugh’s words, “…provides a comprehensive history of archaeology, preservation, and heritage management at Ani. It examines the current preservation campaign that is unfolding at Ani and places it in the broader context of cultural heritage preservation in Turkey, and of the challenges posed by Armenian cultural heritage sites in particular.”
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I really don’t feel that it is possible that Beyhan Karamağaralı’ right-wing nationalistic leanings were directly related to the shoddy work performed at the historic church in Ani. Rather, it is the unfortunate withering state of Turkish archaeology that is more to blame. In general, Turkish archaeologists are a myopic, jealous group who spends so much time infighting and back biting that they are unable to publish their work or carry out meaningful field work. Many lack the basic archaeological skills. Dare I say, some are only interested in treasure hunting. Moreover, the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism is inept in practically everything and anything they do. I have worked with them directly on cultural heritage projects and found so many of their ‘experts’ to be uneducated, unable (or unwilling) to speak English or other languages and an altogether despotic and conceited organisation who does Turkey no favours. One only has to look at the fiasco associated with the Zeugma Mosaics and the Packard Foundation in Gaziantep to see that Turkey so often just doesn’t ‘get it’ in terms of nurturing cultural heritage. Remember the old Turkish notion: The brightest and most skilled of university graduates is easily employable by the Foreign Ministry. The bottom of the heap goes to the Forestry Ministry or the Tourism Ministry!
Sorry, I may be a bit off topic here. I hope the church may be restored to its rightful place in historical and architectural/archaeological terms and become a hallowed place of worship, not just a museum.
Suzanne, Karamağaralı undertook no “restoration” work at Ani – she limited her destruction to amateurish excavations (at which she was rarely present in person). The destructive reconstructions of the city walls and the Merchant’s Palace were initiated by the Turkish Ministry of Culture, and Karamağaralı (so I have been told) actually tried to get them stopped. The idea given in the article that Ani could “fall victim to a nationalist backlash” is bizarre given that all the current threats to Ani have been AKP-generated. It is not unlikely that their local activists will propose the conversion of the cathedral into a mosque (as has recently happened to Haghia Sophia at Trabzon, and to many other churches in Turkey that had been – on paper anyway – officially preserved as historical monuments during that “nationalist”-run era).
This subject is not directly related to the main topic but I would be very interested to hear more about why the involvement of the Packard Foundation in the rescue and display of the Zeugma mosaics is/was a “fiasco” (above comment). I am not disagreeing but, having a particular interest in the mosaics after visiting both Belkis and the Museum earlier this year during a trip which involved visiting all of Turkey’s UNESCO sites and many of its Tentative List one’s too, I would like to know more! This both because of the particular and because of any light it might shine on the wider points you make about Turkey and its “nurturing” (or otherwise) of its cultural heritage – which I experienced both positively and negatively during our trip (For instance I would regard the “restoration” at Laodikia among the latter!). I have searched the Web and have found a number of articles on the subject indicating, for instance, conflict between Provincial and Central Government on the intended location of the Mosaics. Also a hint that the early idea was for a museum at Belkis itself. But, as yet, nothing has emerged which could justify the word “Fiasco”. Indeed we were very impressed with the way in which the new museum allowed the mosaics to be displayed
Thanks for any insight.
Watenpaugh is fundamentally wrong to state that there is now a “different design philosophy, restoration philosophy” at Ani. I have been to Ani every year since 1984 (I am cited in Watenpaugh’s report) and can state that nothing has changed – there is just the same destruction by “restoration”, but on a massively increased scale. Last year’s unnecessary “restoration” of the Church of the Abughamir’s involved tearing off all the original stone roofing slabs and replacing them with fake hollow ones made of fibreglass and having parts of the stepped foundation rebuilt using ugly, machine-cut, thin sheets of dark stone. Over the past three years the World Monument Fund has turned the Church of the Redeemer from an astonishing and unique ruin with an awesome presence into an inaccessible steel-clad construction site. It is a fundamental rule in modern conservation that you do not start any intervention unless you know how you intend to progress and finish it. Yet WMF’s destruction at the Redeemer’s Church was initiated without any masterplan being put in place – the supposed conservators simply decide on things as they go along. This is openly admitted in the private reports issued by the WMF to the paymaster and initiator of the project – the US government. In 2013 the US ambassador described that funding to me as a “small US government grant” – but it is actually a massive $625,000. It comes from the “Ambassadors Fund” – a shady something whose function is described in the book “U.S. Cultural Diplomacy and Archaeology, Soft Power, Hard Heritage” as “Archaeology forms a critical part of the U.S. State Department’s diplomatic toolkit. Many, if not all, current U.S.-sponsored and directed archaeological projects operate within U.S. diplomatic agendas”. The WMF work being done at Ani has nothing to do with true archaeological conservation – it is an exercise in “Soft Diplomacy”: inserting American influence into a region in ways other than missiles strikes or US army boots on the ground (or the mobile NATO radar stations positioned a few miles from Ani back along the road back to Kars).
Watenpaugh has evidently also not seen the master plan by the Turkish Ministry of Tourism and Kars Municipality that involves the demolition of Ani village and its replacement with a shopping plaza and amusement park to cater for Turkish mass tourism.
The best advice I have heard about Ani came from one of the French archaeologists from the Sorbonne who excavated there in the 1990s. “The best thing that could happen to Ani is for everyone to just leave the place alone” she told me. Not that she took her own advice – the French dug there regularly until thrown out when the Global Heritage Fund bribed their way into exclusivity at Ani by promising vast amounts from Japanese foundations. They in their turn were thrown out when, thanks to the recession, no money at all arrived, and they were replaced by the WMF serving as a proxy for the US government.
Great article Steven, insightful and factual. Related to money spent on the restoration of the Church at Ani, it was common knowledge that the Turkish Ministry of Tourism and Culture spent about $1.5 million (US) to ‘restore’ the church. They ensured that nobody could worship there, as they designated it a museum.
Thanks Suzanne. I don’t know how much it cost, but the project architect for the atrocious and destructive “restoration” of the Tigran Honents church pictured at the top of this article was Yavuz Özkaya – the very same person seemingly praised by Watenpaugh. I have been told that the apex of the conical roof of the dome was not rebuilt on instruction of the Ministry of Culture in order to avoid any Aghtamar-style controversy about whether there should be a cross placed there or not. Massive amounts of original stonework were hacked off during that “restoration”, and large sections of entirely new work constructed that matches neither the original or follows the design of the original (old photos show what once was there). Watenpaugh is out of date as far as conservation philosophy goes when she writes that “if you have to add something, it should be visible that this is a new thing”. Modern technology can easily differentiate new from old without resorting to a deliberate visual disruption. The rest of what she calls “restoration philosophy” is correct as such, but it is all utterly not the way Özkaya (a commercial architect who once specialised in designing schools and hospitals and hotels and suchlike) goes about his heavy-handed “restorations”: they involve a maximalist approach with extensive new construction work that is not reversible. The core concept of modern conservation philosophy (note I use the term “conservation” and NOT the discredited term “restoration”) is MINIMUM INTERVENTION. That core concept is completely absent from everything that has happened at Ani in recent decades, and from everything that is planned to happen there.