DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF CITY MUSEUMS IN TURKEY SINCE 2000 A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate School of Engineering and Sciences of İzmir Institute of Technology in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in Architecture by Ayşe Nur ŞENEL FİDANGENÇ December 2018 İZMİR ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Initially I offer my sincerest gratitude to my supervisor Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ela Çil for her encouragement, instructions, expert guidance and her trust throughout the study period. I would like to thank the members of the dissertation committee Prof. Dr. Deniz Güner and Prof. Dr. Şeniz Çıkış for their valuable comments and encouragement. I would like to express my thanks to the thesis defense committee, Prof. Dr. Şebnem Yücel of the Department of Architecture at MEF University and Assoc. Prof. Dr. Adile Arslan Avar of Department of City and Regional Planning at İzmir Institute of Technology for their contributions. Special thanks to my friends Pınar Kılıç, Hatice Aktürk Ablan and my colleagues for all the emotional support and encouragement they provided. It is a pleasure to thank my parents Reyhan and Mahmut Şenel and my parents- in-law Gülay and Velit Fidangenç for caring for my baby during the writing process of this dissertation. And I am indebted to my parents and my older sister Emetullah Elif Yiğit for their loving support, encouragement, patience and trust throughout my education and in every moment of my life. I would have not been able to complete this work without feeling their love and faith in me. I would like to express my gratitude to my husband Mehmet Fidangenç for his love, patience, encouragement and being my biggest supporter in my life. And I would like to thank to my little daughter Aslı Fidangenç who has brought happiness and joy into my life. ABSTRACT DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF CITY MUSEUMS IN TURKEY SINCE 2000 Since 2000, in Turkey 83 city museums are established and nearly 90 new ones are announced to be opened soon. The literature on the city museums in Turkey considers city museum as the establisher of the city identity. In that point archiving the local values, serving as the memory and narrator of history of the city is emphasized. Regarding all these “missions”, the city museums are seen as the “mirror of the city” which reflects/represents the city. The theoretical and methodological lens that this thesis has is discourse analysis, which is a suitable lens to detect the relationships between statements and spatial practices. Hence this dissertation analyzes city museums in Turkey through a tripartite system of discursive parts: the statements of the actors, the buildings and their locations, and the exhibitions. The relation between these three parts deciphers how the certain concepts and themes dominate the discourse of city museums in Turkey. While the interrelation of these parts is important, their relation to the political conjuncture of today and the museological past of Turkey is crucial to discuss how the political practices instrumentalize the city museums. With the overall analysis, this dissertation discusses how the discourse of city museums in Turkey constitutes the knowledge of localness with using the concepts of memory, history and identity through the representative strategy of today’s political discourses. iv ÖZET 2000 YILINDAN İTİBAREN TÜRKİYE’DEKİ KENT MÜZELERİNİN SÖYLEM ANALİZİ 2000 yılından günümüze Türkiye’de 83 kent müzesi kurulmuş ve yaklaşık 90 müzenin de kurulum çalışması devam etmektedir. Türkiye’deki kent müzeleri literatürü kent müzelerini kent kimliğini kuran, yerel değerleri arşivleyen, kentin belleği olan ve kentin tarihini anlatan kurumlar olarak ele alır. Bütün bu “misyonlar” ile kent müzeleri kenti yansıtan/temsil eden “kentin aynası” olarak değerlendirilir. Bu tez kuramsal ve metodolojik olarak, söylemler ve mekansal pratiklerin ilişkisini çözümlemek adına, söylem analizini kullanarak Türkiye’deki kent müzelerini müzeleri kuran aktörlerin söylemleri, müze binaları ve konumları ile müzelerde yer alan sergilemelere odaklanan üçlü bir söylemsel sistem üzerinden analiz eder. Bu üç parçanın birbiri ile ilişkisi, belirli kavram ve temaların kent müzeleri söylemini nasıl domine ettiğini çözümler. Bu parçaların birbirleriyle bağıntısı önemli olduğu gibi, bunların günümüz politik konjonktürü ve Türkiye’nin müzeolojik geçmişi ile olan ilişkisi de politik pratiklerin kent müzelerini nasıl araçsallaştırdığını tartışmak adına elzemdir. Bütün bu analizler doğrultusunda bu tez, Türkiye’deki kent müzeleri söyleminin bellek, tarih ve kimlik kavramlarını kullanarak, mevcut politik yaklaşımların temsiliyet stratejisi aracılığıyla yerellik bilgisini nasıl kurduğunu tartışır. v TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES........................................................................................................viii CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION......................................................................................1 1.1. Emergence of the City Museum and the Early Discussions on its Raison D’etre...........................................................................................4 1.2. The City Museums in Turkey................................................................19 1.3. On Methodology....................................................................................23 1.3.1. Discourse Analysis..................................................................24 1.3.2. Research Strategy....................................................................26 1.3.3. Elements forming the Discourse.............................................28 1.3.3.1. Voices of the Actors....................................................28 1.3.3.2. Messages of the Buildings...........................................31 1.3.3.3. Exhibitions as Narrators..............................................33 1.4. Organization of the Chapters.................................................................34 CHAPTER 2. PRODUCTION OF CITY MUSEUMS IN TURKEY.............................36 2.1. Pre-Production: The Need of City Museums.........................................36 2.2. Process: Actors, Buildings, Locations and Exhibitions.........................40 2.2.1. Actors......................................................................................40 2.2.2. Buildings and Locations.........................................................44 2.2.3. Exhibitions..............................................................................66 2.2.3.1. Content: Values That Make the City............................66 2.2.3.1.1. Archive and Collection.....................................71 2.2.3.1.2. Concept and Scenario.......................................76 2.2.3.2. Representation: “City at a Glance”...............................80 2.2.3.3. Presentation: From the City Model to Miniature........104 2.3. Concluding Remarks...........................................................................114 CHAPTER 3. IDEOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS.......................................................116 3.1. On the Relation of History, Identity, Memory and Ideology..............117 3.1.1. Nationalism...........................................................................120 vi 3.1.2. Conservatism and Neo-Liberalism.......................................137 3.2. The City Museums in Turkey in the Cross-section of Nationalism, Conservatism and Neo-Liberalism................................142 3.2.1. The Museological Foundations of City Museums................142 3.2.2. The Conceptual Foundations of City Museums....................152 3.3. Concluding Remarks...........................................................................160 CHAPTER 4. CONCLUSIONS....................................................................................165 4.1. Concluding Discussion........................................................................165 4.2. Comments for Further Studies.............................................................171 REFERENCES..............................................................................................................174 APPENDICES APPENDIX A. THE LIST OF THE ESTABLISHED CITY MUSEUMS IN TURKEY.......................................................................................189 APPENDIX B. THE STATEMENTS OF THE ACTORS...........................................193 APPENDIX C. MUSEUMS AND THE CONTENTS OF THE EXHIBITIONS........237 vii LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page Figure 2.1. Bursa City Museum......................................................................................45 Figure 2.2. Tire City Museum.........................................................................................46 Figure 2.3. Trabzon City Museum..................................................................................48 Figure 2.4. Bartın City History Museum........................................................................55 Figure 2.5. Kadir Has City and Mimar Sinan Museum..................................................58 Figure 2.6. Project of Üsküdar Municipality..................................................................59 Figure 2.7. Bilecik Living City Museum........................................................................60 Figure 2.8. Bilecik Living City Museum and its environment.......................................61 Figure 2.9. Kızılcahamam Educator Nuray Yeşil City Museum....................................62 Figure 2.10. Nusaybin City Museum..............................................................................63