CELAL BEŞIKTEPE TMMOB BOARD MEMBER
According to anthropologists: In our world, which has a history of 4.5 billion years, the history of the living past is 3.5 billion years. We encounter mammals 180 million years ago. Two million years have passed since man broke away from the animal kingdom. In its two million years of evolution, humans have experienced war and peace with each other, that is, with their fellow humans and with nature. This process continues by changing forms.
Despite two million years of suffering, endless wars, deaths and peace, the known history of the oldest civilizations dates back ten thousand years.
Every person, every class, every nation, every society who is concerned about the future cannot give up the past. The past is the only treasure that helps develop the present and determine the future. Therefore, protecting cultural heritage means taking an ideological stance on behalf of humanity. Because cultural heritage is acquired through a certain process of knowing and understanding. Protecting cultural heritage means renewing consciousness.
This concern for the future and awareness of history are conjoined brothers. Concern for the future requires acquiring historical awareness, and historical consciousness enables future anxiety to take shape in thought.
Clearly, history here does not mean “remembering the past.” On the contrary, historical consciousness shows people the future.
When it comes to protecting cultural values, first of all, opposing the pressures on the cultures of the people who lived on these lands is not only a requirement of democracy, but also a requirement of protecting the future of people. Official education and cultural policy in Turkey that has been going on for years; It has largely prevented us from getting to know the cultures of the world, even learning the social and historical reality of the geography we live in, and meeting with its cultural values.
However, the Anatolian geography in which we live is one of the few major areas where humanity first emerged, the first civilizations began, and science and cultures developed. Anatolia is the expression of an endless historical richness.
Anatolia has a unique place in the world in terms of the antiquity and continuity of settlements. It witnessed the birth and development of civilization, including Mesopotamia and Egypt, and became a main axis in which it flourished and developed throughout its known history. Many communities, whether they left deep traces in history or not, created civilizations on these lands and contributed to the enrichment of creation.
In a way, the history of Anatolia has been the history of the raids of nomadic tribes and colonial communities, and the rise and fall of small states. For this reason, Anatolia has a power of expression beyond its geographical definition.
For centuries, the foundation of Western culture was based on the Greeks, and its religion was based on the Torah. As the culture of the Sumerians began to emerge, it became clear that they were the main source of the development of the Western world.
The most important contribution of the Sumerians to civilization was that they invented a script according to their language and developed it to write on every subject. The clay formed by the Tigris and Euphrates became the material of writing, and they were able to write whatever they wanted and also enabled the Babylonians, Assyrians, Hittites and Urartians to write their own languages. The Sumerian script also led to the invention of Egyptian and many other scripts.
In Anatolia, the source of civilization, the achievements of humanity resulting from thousands of years of struggle are being destroyed, they are prevented from being preserved and developed from generation to generation, and people are separated from their historical awareness and cultural heritage. In fact, these practices based on rejection and denial are the products of racist and chauvinist policies.
Why do efforts and calls to protect historical and cultural values fail? When the essence of historical heritage and cultural values are not met with the understanding of protecting the history of humanity, cultural values and living environments, there is no response.
We are not taught the civilization and cultural values of the geography we live in in schools. The official history taught does not include these. The same understanding of history prevails in engineering and architecture education at universities. However, the depths of Anatolia lie beneath our feet like a big book. The layers at these depths are like the pages of a book. As archaeological remains are excavated, the taboos that put people into the minority-majority category are being destroyed one by one.
The origin of cities is in Anatolia…
Çatalhöyük settlement, which is ranked first in the list of the origins of cities, emerged in Anatolia. Excavations in Çatalhöyük, the oldest and largest known Neolithic center in the world, give clues about the people and life of 7 thousand years ago.
In this 14-layered settlement with its renovation phases, which provides detailed data on all areas of prehistoric life, flat-roofed adobe houses, which are an indispensable element of traditional Anatolian architecture, were developed adjacent to each other, back to back, and it is understood that the roofs of different heights were used for daily work and as outdoor spaces. The city was founded next to a rich obsidian (hard volcanic stone that resembles colored glass and is used to make arrowheads and knives) mine; This stone was exchanged for various foods that did not grow locally.
The mound, which was excavated by the famous British archaeologist James Mellaart in 1958, has been worked on by an international team headed by Ian Hodder since 1993.
No pottery artifacts were found during the excavations in the world's oldest city by Mellaart. However, this was one of the features that marked the Neolithic Age, along with plough farming and domestic animals; Therefore, it was expected to be located in a city covering an area of 300 decares, where 6 thousand people lived. The most striking feature of the city is the large number of mausoleums. Çatalhöyük's thick walls, flat-roofed houses made of stone and adobe, small squares and ostentatious public works of art are evidence of an active civic life. The tools they used and their highly naturalistic art style point to an ecologically oriented community that lived in the last periods of the Stone Age (Paleolithic), rather than to a soil-working community of people who lived in the early periods of the Neolithic Age. Considering the number of comments made on Çatalhöyük and Mellaart's own comments, it can be seen that the inhabitants of this city have a anacentric feature.
Women frequently appear in symbols of urban culture. The most striking figure among the small figurines found in the city belongs to the Mother Goddess. Care was taken to bury women and children in a combined grave.
Çatalhöyük is the only city in the world without streets. There were no streets in this city, as houses were entered and exited from above and through roofs; Therefore, there was no separate public space used by men, isolated from the private space, as there is today.
The question of when the first map was drawn is doomed to remain unanswered. But the oldest available drawing showing landforms is undoubtedly the panorama found on the northern wall of the "temple" number VII 14 in Çatalhöyük. This drawing, dated between 6200 and 6050 BC, is interpreted by both archaeologists and geologists as a picture of the descent of the giant stravolcano Hasan Mountain, which rises in the easternmost part of the Konya Plain. The strip consisting of rectangular shapes in front of the drawing represents a community of residences, in other words, a city, Çatalhöyük.
This map seems to be drawn quite realistically. This realistic cartography tradition dates back at least to the second millennium BC in the Middle East, from maps of the Babylonian cities of Nippur and Sippar drawn on clay tablets.
We understand. In fact, the oldest known of these clay tablet maps is a map believed to show all of Mesopotamia and was found in Yorgan Tepe near Kirkuk at the beginning of this century. The common features of all maps found in the Middle East are as follows: 1) Realistic cartography, 2) Symbols have passed from one map to another without changing for hundreds or even thousands of years, 3) No change is seen in the drawing technique.
It is possible to see the second and third of these features in the only world map we have of the Middle East.
Thales' student Anaximander was the first to show the inhabited world on a map.
Hekataios of Miletus, who had traveled extensively, then made the map admirably accurate... The ancients drew the world in a round shape, with Hellas in the middle and Delphi at its center, because it contains the navel of the world. Democritus, a very experienced person, was the first to realize that the shape of the earth is elongated, with its length being one and a half times its width.
Çatalhöyük: As the city of Equality, Peace and Democracy, it shows that the world can change again…
Prof., the director of the excavations that have been carried out by academicians and students from local and foreign universities since 1993, with countless comments made on Çatalhöyük. Considering Ian Hodder's comments: It becomes clear that at Çatalhöyük the division of labor was equally distributed between men and women and there was no hierarchy. The 50-60 square meter houses in Çatalhöyük and the items found in the grave ruins show that the city had a very egalitarian structure. Examinations of hundreds of skeletons reveal no signs of violent death.
Unlike many settlements that emerged later, Çatalhöyük was not surrounded by walls.
The city of Çatalhöyük is not only the center of the Mother Goddess belief; It was also considered the oldest example of a peaceful, egalitarian, holistic social system. The idea was exciting, and since the excavations, many visitors from around the world, mostly women, continue to visit the city.
Another question mark that Çatalhöyük raises is the origin of the society living in this settlement, which was unique before and around it, and where it went after the settlement was abandoned. Çatalhöyük also attracts the attention of all humanity, especially sociologists, with its finds that imply a classless society.
He himself shows that the world has not always been as it is today, but has changed over time and therefore can change again; He embodies the longing for another social order in his body; We should care about Çatalhöyük and raise awareness about it for the future of humanity, as it can make people say amen to impossible prayers.
The entire region, from the Nile River to the Indus River, has hosted the most highly organized empires with their administrative structure and extensive communication networks. It is known that many cultures lived on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates in this region. The Tigris and Euphrates cultures carried from one end to the other for thousands of years.
Hasankeyf, which will be submerged under the waters of the Ilısu dam, which came to the fore as a result of the choices of the energy monopolies, is at the intersection of Northern Mesopotamia and Anatolia, at a point where it provides a passage and base for trade and economic developments between the two regions by overcoming the Tigris barrier, which people had a divine fear and respect for until the end of the Middle Ages. was established.
“This was the extreme base of the west in the wars of sovereignty over Anatolia, the most important country of the period, between the Iranian Empires (Parthians-Sassanids), the great power of the ancient world in the east, and the Romans, the great power of the west, and then the Byzantines.
At that time, the world's engineering and art wonder, the largest bridge, was built here by Karaaslan, a castle and inner city were built on the rocky plateau, called the upper city, and a large residential area with vineyards and gardens was established on the terraces below. In an invention that was considered genius for that age, drinking water was delivered from a cliff to the hill where the castle opposite was located, using compound containers and a siphon-like system. 'Equipped with great monuments such as the Great Palace and Castle gates, it became the most important transit center of the Silk Road.' (Prof. M.Oluş Arık, AÜ DTCF Art History, Hasankeyf Excavation Head, Art Magazine)
The history of Hasankeyf, which is clearly visible on the ground, goes on and on. What is hidden in the depths that are not clearly visible above the ground?
What does it mean to save Hasankeyf, which will be flooded by the Ilısu dam? What does this question mean? What is at stake here is not just historical architectural monuments and art finds. What is in question is a history experienced by bringing all of these together. Hasankeyf is a texture of beauty created by nature and humans hand in hand. Can the texture created by natural features and human-created creatures in Hasankeyf be moved? Caves, cave-temples and residences cannot be moved. Civilization structures are not just a few works of art and history. Here, there is a whole medieval capital with its texture consisting of roads, shelters, common spaces, districts, drinking and waste water systems and bazaars. This urban texture cannot be moved either.
Don't we need to get rid of a mentality that introduces Zeugma, which is under the waters of the Birecik dam, to the public as the "city of mosaics" and thinks that it has "saved" the mosaics by moving them to the Gaziantep museum?
Things that can be moved include some art finds and parts of some buildings that can be moved. But this will never be the rescue of Hasankeyf and Zeugma. Hasankeyf and Zeugma are historical centers of civilization that need to be researched and brought to light.
As the meeting point of Central Asian, Anatolian and Mesopotamian cultural traditions, as well as one of the first great centers of Eastern Christianity, Hasankeyf is a city with much to gain in terms of science and cultural values: Hasankeyf.
Those who consider the way to save historical and cultural values in this way do not even bring up the underground assets that are not clearly visible on the ground today, but can reveal riches beyond what we expected. Hasankeyf, which was forgotten and sacrificed because it would be submerged, has long been forgotten, along with its historical and cultural values, and the future of the local people.
Zeugma was the most famous city in the upper Euphrates valley; because, along the river, the only bridge between the Taurus Mountains in southeastern Anatolia and the Babylonian country was located here.
One of the Middle East's main trade routes connected the Persian Gulf and Iranian Plateau at one end with the Mediterranean and Anatolia at the other. Passing through northern Mesopotamia, it split into two near the city of Charrhae, known as Harran. The road to the northwest passed through the Taurus Mountains into Anatolia and intersected with the Euphrates at Samosata. The westward branch headed towards the Mediterranean and crossed the river at Zeugma.
A section from the history of centuries-old settlement in this region: It will enable us to understand how Samasota, Zeugma and the surrounding lands, although located at the far end of the Euphrates Valley, were in relations with their neighbors and the wider world. Eastern Roman Emperor Valens (364-378) decided to exile Bishop Eusebius of Samosata.
“Eusebius told what was in his mind to one of the slaves in the house who followed him, carrying only a pillow and a book. When he reached the bank of the river (for the Euphrates flows along the walls of the town), he got into a boat and told the rowers to sail towards Zeugma. In the morning, the bishop arrived in Zeugma, and people were crying and grieving in Samosata. Then the whole community expressed their sadness at the removal of their religious leaders, and the river was filled with crowds of people who had gone on a journey.
Unlike Freya Strak, Eusebius was able to move quickly with the current during his 107-kilometer journey. The writings of Pliny the Elder, dating from the first century, mention two towns he passed along the way: Below Samasata…the towns watered by the river are: Epiphaneia, Antiokheia, called “on the Euphrates”, and about a hundred kilometers from Samasata, famous for the crossing of the Euphrates. Zeugma and Apamea, located on the opposite bank of the river, are connected to this city by a bridge; Seleucus, the founder of both cities, had the bridge built.
Almost nothing can be said about the Greek cities Antiokheia and Epiphaneia, north of Zeugma along the Euphrates. Although both will be flooded by the Birecik Dam, Zeugma is different because it consists of two cities: Seleucia on the west coast and Apamea on the east coast. These cities were named after Selevkos Nikator, one of the commanders of Alexander the Great, and his wife Queen Apame of Bactriane.
These two cities together were known as Zeugma, meaning “bridge.” (David Kennedy, Submerged Cities of the Upper Euphrates, World Magazine September/October 1998)
Zeugma literally means “bridge” or “passage”. The same is true in terms of wealth and settlement! This volatile connecting line has also been a "bridge" between East and West, between two mainlands and civilizations, in every sense.
The bridge in question is a mobile structure consisting of planks extended over a series of boats tightly connected to fixed piers on both sides of the Euphrates. It has been like this for centuries. This bridge was a bridge construction technique depicted in Roman art and used even during the Ottoman period on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The bridge was, and must have been, a witness to daily comings and goings: colorful caravans, ambassadors traveling back and forth between the Parthian capital Ctesiphon, pilgrims heading to the great Temple of the Moon in Harran, and perhaps most commonly, peasants bringing their produce to the city.
At least two centuries after the birth of Christ, Zeugma, like Samosata, was a border city with a legion headquarters. Like Samosata, it was a city of mixed cultures: the name of a nearby village is Semitic, but the first colonists were Greeks. When the Roman army began to bring its legionnaires not from Italy but from other places where citizen soldier candidates could be found, the city became a real center of regional integration...
The real development, growth and permanence of Zeugma; It starts with coming out of Greek culture and becoming a part of Rome. Buildings, training areas, camps, sports facilities, baths built for soldiers; Additionally, silver coins worth 1.5 million dinars annually sent from the capital; The urban population swelled to meet the various needs of this segment, and the rich merchants fed by trade. Thus, all this liveliness made Zeugma flourish. It is equipped with villas, artists and permanent products of culture. In the end, a rich lifestyle emerged...
Fourteen villas that survived from that period were unearthed in Zeugma. All of them are wealthy merchant houses. Over time, the adobe structures were demolished; To some extent, they were covered with rubble and fill carried by the fires; A comprehensive and encompassing wave turned on itself and covered Zeugma.
What wrong did these civilizations, which are and will remain under water, just as they were under the ground before, did in the past? It is necessary to ask. Where are the soldiers of the legion? What about mosaic masters and bridge-building engineers? Where did they all go?
After the land, the indisputable victory of water, in fact the energy monopolies, absorbed them all. Now, Zeugma, Halfeti and other Euphrates settlements are gradually falling away from life.
Capital projects that do not include people...
Thousands of hectares of the Munzur Valley, which lies between Tunceli and Ovacık, was declared a National Park and protected in 1971. Munzur Valley National Park; UNESCO's XVII.
It is a "physical and biological formation with exceptional universal values in terms of aesthetics and science" as defined in the "Convention on the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage" adopted by the General Assembly on 16 November 1972. Turkey also has a signature under this contract.
Munzur Valley, the symbol of history, culture, life and hopes and the home of rare plants and animals, is now under threat from dam and power plant construction. Tunceli is surrounded by mountains on all sides. Bubbling springs gush out from these mountains. A total of eight dams and hydroelectric power plants are planned to be built on the Munzur Stream, which is formed by nearly forty pores.
Another local person says, "There is no dam here, this is not a stream, it is honor," and another responds: "What do I care about honor that has no place for humans?"
Livestock, which constitutes the most important economic resource of the region, has died out due to the plateau ban that has been going on for years. The dams to be built on waters that are clean enough for people to dip their bread into and eat will also destroy the Munzur Valley. When the death of the valley comes to the agenda: "A place where I cannot cultivate the field on the edge of it with pleasure and where I have not been able to walk around comfortably for years has either lived or died!" says the local people.
These people, whose hearts are burned together with their villages, look at projects that have no place for people in this way. Because these projects mean intense migration again.
Who makes the decisions about these projects that have no place for humans and nature?
By those who seek more robbery, more profit, by those who worship money... Public resources are transferred to capital through “Build-Operate-Transfer” and “Build-Operate” projects. These decisions taken by political and bureaucratic power as a result of the preferences of energy monopolies: They are the product of an understanding that excludes the public and ignores science and planning.
The same problems are experienced all over Turkey. However, these projects are decided in the name of "public interest". It is being nationalized. Historical and cultural heritage, agricultural areas and orchards are being submerged in the name of "public benefit". People are being uprooted from their cultural living environments and their ancestral lands. People who were forced to migrate for reasons of "security" are now being forced to migrate in the name of the so-called "public interest".
Can there be "public interest" in projects that exclude people, who are social beings, do not gain people's approval and support, and make living conditions difficult rather than improving them? These decisions, which do not involve humans and are taken literally "by force", are against fundamental rights and freedoms, human dignity, and the universal values of democracy. The production vessels of a people are cut off, they are left alone with their own fate and are left without a future.
All these disgraces we are experiencing, 21st century. It must be a classic of the modern man of the 21st century and the values he created, disregarding nature and humanity! This path we have taken is a major attack on humanity's roots, history, culture and future.
Trees, birds, rivers, valleys, mountains, historical and cultural values do not mean anything to them unless they are converted into money. Everything means money for them. Money that is not born, that does not laugh, that does not run, that does not flow, that does not bloom, that does not develop, that does not love and that does not resemble our children... It does not even care about those that are dead and that do not resemble anything, respect for the right to life of people and living things.
Birecik Dam, which flooded Zeugma and Halfeti, was built by local and foreign capital with the Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) model. Birecik Dam is the first project built by international capital with the BOT model. This project, which was not included in the planning documents of the Southeastern Anatolia Project (GAP), was put into effect later due to the preferences of energy monopolies who wanted to turn Turkey into an exploitation corridor. The Ilısu Dam, which will flood Hasankeyf, is also their project.
Capital is insatiable. Civilization, history, culture, the future of the people do not concern him. They are after new profiteering projects. They don't even care about the destruction of Yusufeli with the dam they plan to build on the Çoruh River, or the Green Valley with the Alaçalı dam in Şile, Istanbul.
The villagers of Bergama responded to this destructive process of capital by resisting. They fought against gold prospectors with cyanide. They frustrated the decisions and calculations made behind closed doors. They disrupted the games of gold monopolies and their local partners. They resisted by showing their hearts. They processed the information as if they were processing the soil. To their lands, to their plains cotton like snow,
They claimed tobacco like amber, wheat like gold, the dignified pines and oaks in their mountains, and their future, and they won.
The people of Pergamon have shown that the last word has not been spoken yet and the hated and excluded "last man" has not died yet.
The desire to live in a world without borders is increasing…
As archaeological remains are excavated, our opportunities to question the taboos that put people into minority-majority categories increase, one by one. Man's desire to live on a landmass without borders is increasing even more.
These lands have a very rich cultural heritage, surrounded by archaeological ruins on all four sides; Egalitarian, peaceful, holistic social systems have been established. In this geography where settlements that are not surrounded by walls are created, humanity is being separated from its culture by the will of the people to live together equally and freely, with practices fed by nationalist and chauvinist policies.
A Ministry of Culture, which does not even make an inventory of historical and cultural values, and therefore does not even consider accessing the rich data of Anatolian civilization, does not even feel the need to carry out and disseminate the archaeo-sociology of any of the limited number of excavations. The fact that the share of this Ministry's budget, whose doors culture is afraid to enter, in the general budget is one in a thousand, is enough to explain how related the system is to cultural heritage.
In order for bourgeois rule to continue, the essence of people's social relations is desired not to be revealed. When coming to terms with the bourgeois ideology based on prejudice and illusion, the first important source of information is cultural heritage.
It is not easy to gain historical awareness in a backward society. With his dialectical theatre, Brecht put into practice the fact that it is possible to save individuals from the pit of "alienation" into which capitalist society has put them, by "alienating" them again. This situation brings to mind the "law of denial of denial" of dialectics.
This is man's leap from the world of obligations to the world of freedom.
“Human beings, due to their biological constitution, are not condemned to destroy each other or to be the victim of a cruel fate of their own making. "I see unlimited competition, which causes destruction of social consciousness in individuals, as the most terrible evil of capitalism," said Albert Einstein. The way to eliminate these evils is a planned economy that regulates production according to the needs of society, distributing the work to be done equally among everyone who can do it, and every man, It sees the establishment of a democratic balance that will guarantee the livelihood of women and children.
Man must first change his own social nature. It is necessary to stop thinking that nature was created for people to benefit from...
This situation is explained by Marx: “From the point of view of a higher economic form of society, the private ownership of the earth by individual individuals would seem as absurd as the private ownership of one person by another. An entire society, not even a nation, or even all societies that exist together, do not own the earth. These are merely its possessors, holders of the right to benefit from it, and they must pass it on to future generations in an advanced state.”
Our duty is to uncompromisingly comprehend and interpret life in this primitive world where robbery and exploitation continue in the most brutal way and to change this inhumane process. After all, under all circumstances, turning towards freedom, which is the truth itself, means meeting the human values that are wanted to be destroyed.
Isn't this how labor, which is the creator of human progress, social development, true democracy, science and culture, will flourish and develop in all depths of life?
Istanbul/ 2 July/ 2002
SOURCE :
1- M.İlin-E.Segal, How Man Became Human, 2nd Edition 1975, Hür Publications
2- Murray Bookchin, Urbanization Without Urbanization, Ayrıntı Publications 1999
3- Hekmut Uhlig, Anatolia, the Mother of Europe, Telos Publications
4- Celal Beşiktepe, Our Cultural and Natural Resources from Past to Present, Evrensel Kültür, September 2000
5- Our World of Art, Archeology: Art from the Bottom, Yapı Kredi Publications, Issue 80 Summer 2000
6- Images of the Earth, F.Muhtar Katırcıoğlu Map Collection, Yapı Kredi Publications, February 2000
7- From Boğazköy to Karatepe, Yapı Kredi Publications, 2nd Edition May 2001
8- Albert Einstein, Why Socialism? December '99 Universal Culture
9- K.Marks, Capital Third Volume, 3rd Edition, Forty-Sixth Chapter, Sol Publications: 1997
