Tourism-led adaptive reuse of the built vernacular heritage: A critical assessment of the transformation of historic neighbourhoods in Cappadocia, Turkey

ABSTRACT

Since the last quarter of the twentieth century, increased tourism in traditional settlements have led to the adaptive reuse of built vernacular heritage to serve the tourism industry. The adaptive reuse of historic buildings is considered a conservation strategy and an alternative to new constructions in historic environments. Nevertheless, the adaptive reuse of built vernacular heritage and its socio-spatial impacts have not yet been sufficiently investigated. To fill the gap, this paper, focuses on Cappadocia, Turkey, where adaptive reuse of individual vernacular houses has recently paved the way for the transformation of an entire neighbourhood, the historic neighbourhood of Kayakapı, into a ‘holiday village.’ This study argues that traditional settlements and communities in Cappadocia have been subjected to ‘gentrification’ and so-called ‘Disneyfication.’ Such historic environments are facing controversial physical interventions, detached from local communities and devoted to a single function, namely tourism, becoming ‘stereotypical and depersonalised.’ The study further argues that the current situation is incompatible with international heritage and conservation policies. Correspondingly, to reveal the potential conflicts, the recent revitalisation project of the historic neighbourhood of Kayakapı in Cappadocia is examined as a case study.

KEYWORDS:

• Adaptive reuse
• built vernacular heritage
• heritage and conservation policies
• neighbourhood revitalisation
• tourism
• Disneyfication
• gentrification
• traditional settlements
• Cappadocia
• Kayakapı

Acknowledgments

This article is an extended and revised version of a paper read at ‘Beyond All Limits 2018: The International Congress on Sustainability in Architecture, Planning, and Design’ (17-19 October 2018) in Ankara, Turkey.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. A recent literature review by Fatemeh Hedieh Arfa, et al. reveals that ‘the adaptive reuse of heritage buildings,’ in general, ‘as a whole, has not been widely studied’ (Arfa et al., “Adaptive Reuse,” 159).

2. In 2003, within the scope of Vision 2023 Panels, Yıldız Sey drew attention to two major tourism-led problems that historic settlements in Turkey face: replacement of locals with tourists, and demolition and reconstruction of historic buildings to meet the expectations of tourists. She calls the conservation works that prioritise visitor expectations rather than historical document value as ‘decorative conservation’ (Sey, “Sürdürülebilir Kalkınma”).

3. For more on the physical setting of Cappadocia, see Andolfato and Zucchi, “The Physical Setting”; and Hild and Restle, Kappadokien, 47–61.

4. The decision of the Council of Ministers of 23 February 1973.

5. Ekim, “Ürgüp-Göreme,” 43.

6. UNESCO, “Rock Sites of Cappadocia.” According to the World Heritage List, the site is located within the coordinates N38 40 0.012 E34 51 0 and covers 9,883.81 ha in Nevşehir Province (Cappadocia) in Central Anatolia. The following locations are also covered in the list: Karain Site, Karlık Site, Yeşilöz Site, Soğanlı Site, Subterranean cities of Kaymaklı, and Subterranean city of Derinkuyu.

7. The decision of the Council of Ministers of 30 October 1986. Most recently in 2019, the Cappadocia Site Management Act (T.C. Resmi Gazete, “Kapadokya Alanı”) was issued. Accordingly, the responsibilities and authorisations previously divided between several institutions are given to a single management. Legislators argue that the act aims for better protection of the area. Those sceptical fear the exact opposite effect of the new act, which abolished the cabinet decision of 1986, declaring Cappadocia a National Park. For a detailed discussion on this issue, see Alp, “Kapadokya”; and Solmaz Şakar, “Kapadokya Alanı.” For a helpful summary of the history of conservation in Cappadocia, see Can, “Traditional Dwellings,” 158–63; and Solmaz Şakar, “Kapadokya Alanı.”

8. Madran and Özgönül, “Kapadokya Notları,” 141.

9. Öztürk Büke, “Heritage and Tourism”

10. Alper, “Kapadokya”

11. Utku and Uludağ, “Uçhisar”; Solmaz Şakar, “Kapadokya Kültürel Miras,” 152–153, 290, 328; Solmaz Şakar and Kahya, “Kapadokya.”

12. Can, “Traditional Dwellings”; Solmaz Şakar, “Kapadokya Kültürel Miras,” 152–153.

13. Although the causes and consequences may differ, the recent classification of the living historic neighbourhood at Nevşehir Castle as an ‘urban renewal area,’ and the displacement of residents here raise concerns in this context. For a critical assessment of the case of Nevşehir, see Özberk, “Nevşehir Kalesi”

14. It is noteworthy that the Kayakapı Project differs from other tourism-led adaptive reuses of built vernacular heritage in the region in terms of its scale and financing model (Solmaz Şakar, “Kapadokya Kültürel Miras,” 183).

15. Yıldırım, “Kayakapı”

16. Akdemir, “Deli Dumrul”; Solmaz Şakar, “Kapadokya Kültürel Miras,” 151–152.

17. See Alper, “Kapadokya,” 3.

18. See Solmaz Şakar, “Kapadokya Kültürel Miras,” 152–154; and Sudaş, “Kapadokya.”

19. Aylin Orbaşlı points out that the transfer of responsibilities from the public sector to the private sector is widespread worldwide and built heritage is no exception (Orbaşlı, “Conservation Theory,” 166).

20. See Alper, “Kapadokya,” 3; and Solmaz Şakar, “Kapadokya Kültürel Miras,” 154.

21. According to the Conservation Area Plan (1/25,000 scale) prepared by the Nevşehir Regional Conservation Council in 1999, the urban fabric at Kayakapı is registered as an ‘urban conservation area’ while open areas are registered as ‘1st and 3rd-degree natural conservation areas' (Kabaoğlu and Yıldırım, “Kayakapı,” 61). The national resolution of the Supreme Council for the Conservation of Cultural Heritage (last updated on 25 January 2017) defines ‘urban conservation areas’ as sites where cultural and natural environmental elements with architectural, local, historical, aesthetic, and artistic features coexist. According to the national resolution, these elements are more valuable together than alone as they transfer the lifestyle of a particular period to future generations (T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı, “Kentsel Sitler”).

22. Within the ‘special tourism project area,’ the dense urban fabric in the upper parts of the neighbourhood is reserved for ‘accommodation,’ while the lower parts towards the valley are reserved for services for ‘same-day-visitors’ (Kabaoğlu and Yıldırım, “Kayakapı,” 62, 65).

23. Yıldırım, “Kayakapı”; Kabaoğlu and Yıldırım, “Kayakapı”; Tuna, Özgül Katlav, and Dinler, ‘Kayakapı.’ The Kayakapı Project started in 2002. It was interrupted for three years between 2008 and 2011 and restarted by a new investor from the tourism sector in 2011 (Kayakapı Bulletin, Kayakapı, 8).

24. Kabaoğlu and Yıldırım, “Kayakapı,” 60.

25. See the official website of the hotel Kayakapı Premium Caves Cappadocia.

26. Kabaoğlu and Yıldırım, “Kayakapı,” 64.

27. When the project was interrupted, the publication was also interrupted. Following the change in investor, the publication restarted in 2012 (Kabaoğlu Yıldırım 62; Karakul and Tuna, 70).

28. See Balkan, “Restorasyon”

29. See Akdemir, “Deli Dumrul”; and Olcaytu İşçen, “Mustafa Kaya”

30. See Tuna, Özgül Katlav, and Dinler, “Kayakapı,” 168; and the official website of the hotel Kayakapı Premium Caves Cappadocia.

31. See CT Haber, “Kayakapı”; and Fib Haber, “Dinler”

32. Kayakapı Bulletin, Kayakapı, 6. For the list of initial principles and objectives of the Kayakapı Project, see Kabaoğlu and Yıldırım, “Kayakapı,” 61, 63.

33. The evaluations of the physical condition of the neighbourhood of Kayakapı and the hotel complex therein are based on a comparative study of old and new photographs (interior and exterior), satellite images, the Conservation and Development Plan of Ürgüp, and observation of the cityscape. The interior of the gated hotel complex could not be personally experienced as access was denied. The article does not cover the evaluation of the technical and scientific appropriateness of restoration works and leaves this issue to the experts.

34. Since the second half of the twentieth century, a large corpus of international documents, including conventions, recommendations, and charters, has been produced to set internationally recognisable standards for issues related to heritage and its conservation. Conventions are referential texts that are binding and further supplemented by declarations, recommendations, and resolutions (Stanley-Price, “The Reconstruction of Ruins,” 34). Declarations and recommendations of the international community each time cover one perspective of heritage. Altogether, the heritage policies form an ‘umbrella’ a frame for the system of governance for experts and others involved in heritage and conservation issues. For charters and other doctrinal texts, see ICOMOS, “doctrinal text.”

35. From the perspective of critical heritage studies, it is noteworthy that there is a ‘false dichotomy’ between natural and cultural heritage categories since human influence is everywhere (Wells, “Critical Heritage Studies,” 219). Likewise, critical heritage studies approaches assume that differentiation between tangible and intangible heritage is arbitrary since ‘all heritage is, in essence, intangible because it is constructed from cultural and individual meanings’ (Wells, “Critical Heritage Studies,” 217, 221). For more on critical heritage studies that first appeared around the turn of the millennium, see Winter, “Critical Heritage Studies,” and Gentry and Smith, “Critical Heritage Studies.”

36. ICOMOS, “Conservation and Restoration.” It was approved at the Second International Congress of Architects and Technicians of Historic Monuments in Venice in 1964 and adopted by the International Council on Monuments and Sites (hereafter ICOMOS) in 1965.

37. Council of Europe, “European Cultural Heritage Strategy,” 3.

38. UNESCO, “Cultural and Natural Heritage.” It was adopted by The General Conference of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (hereafter UNESCO) in Paris on 16 November 1972.

39. Council of Europe, “Value of Cultural Heritage.” It came into force on 1 June 2011.

40. Araoz, “Historic Urban Landscapes,” 33, 36; Jokilehto, “Reconstruction,” 1.

41. Jokilehto, “Authenticity and Integrity,” 2.

42. UNESCO, “Historic Urban Landscape.” The Historic Urban Landscape (hereafter HUL) was first defined as a type of cultural landscape by the Vienna Memorandum in 2005. The Memorandum was adopted by the International Conference on World Heritage and Contemporary Architecture – Managing the Historic Urban Landscape held from 12 to 14 May 2005 in Vienna (UNESCO, “Vienna Memorandum”; Araoz, “Historic Urban Landscapes,” 36). Before this, the most recent recommendation on historical areas was the Recommendation Concerning Safeguarding and Contemporary Role of Historic Areas (ICOMOS, “Historic Areas”). It was adopted by the UNESCO General Conference in Nairobi on 26 November 1976.

43. The Historic Urban Landscape, “Historic Urban Landscape?”.

44. Ibid.

45. T.C. Resmi Gazete, “Koruma Kanunu”

46. T.C. Resmi Gazete, “Milli Parklar”

47. Ahunbay, Tarihi Çevre Koruma, 121; Ahunbay, Kültür Mirasını Koruma, 139–141.

48. ICOMOS Turkey, “MiImari Mirası Koruma”

49. T.C. Resmi Gazete, “KHK/648.”

50. ICOMOS Turkey, “Kapadokya Bildirgesi”

51. See note 21 above.

52. See note 25 above.

53. Karakul and Tuna, Local Governments, 75; Kabaoğlu and Yıldırım, “Kayakapı,” 61–62.

54. ICOMOS, “Tlaxcala Declaration.” It was declared at the Third Inter-American Symposium on the Conservation of Building Heritage organised by the Mexican National Committee of ICOMOS in Tlaxcala.

55. ICOMOS, “Built Vernacular Heritage.” It was ratified by the ICOMOS 12th General Assembly in Mexico in October 1999.

56. ICOMOS, “The Declaration of Amsterdam.” It was declared at the Congress on the European Architectural Heritage, 21-25 October 1975.

57. ICOMOS, “Architectural Heritage.” It was adopted by the Council of Europe, October 1975.

58. ICOMOS Turkey, “Mimari Mirası Koruma.”

59. See, among others, Council of Europe, “European Cultural Heritage Strategy.”

60. World Conference, “Charter for Sustainable Tourism.” The Charter results from the Lanzarote World Conference on Sustainable Tourism held in April 1995 in the Canary Islands.

61. Sey, “Sürdürülebilir Kalkınma”

62. Fatiguso et al., “Resilience”

63. ICOMOS, “International Charter for Cultural Heritage Tourism,” 12.

64. ICOMOS, “International Cultural Tourism Charter.” It was adopted by ICOMOS at the 12th General Assembly in Mexico in October 1999. The Cultural Tourism Charter (1976), adopted in 1976 following the International Seminar on Contemporary Tourism and Humanism in Brussels (Belgium) on 8 and 9 November 1976, was the first international document to focus on the relationship between tourism and cultural heritage (Yáñez, “Cultural Tourism,” 38). The ICOMOS Annual General Assembly in Bangkok (Thailand) recently extended and updated the charter in November 2022. Celia Martínez Yáñez points out the influences of global policies such as Agenda 2030 (Transforming our World: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the resolution adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 25 September 2015) and claims to participatory and polycentric governance on the newly updated ICOMOS International Cultural Heritage Tourism Charter (2022) (Yáñez, “Cultural Tourism,” 45).

65. ICOMOS, “The Valletta Principles.” It was adopted by the 17th ICOMOS General Assembly on 28 November 2011.

66. See, ‘Recommendation D7’ entitled ‘Give consideration to heritage in sustainable tourism development policies’ in Council of Europe, “European Cultural Heritage Strategy.” It was adopted by the Committee of Ministers on 22 February 2017 at the 1,278th meeting of Ministers’ Deputies.

67. ICOMOS, “International Charter for Cultural Heritage Tourism,” 4–5.

68. See note 6 above.

69. See Kabaoğlu and Yıldırım, “Kayakapı,” 62–63.

70. See note 32 above.

71. Kurul, “Reusing Listed Buildings,” 34.

72. ICOMOS, “Conservation and Restoration”

73. ICOMOS, “Introduction of Contemporary Architecture.” It was adopted at the 3rd General Assembly of ICOMOS in Budapest in 1972.

74. ICOMOS, “Built Vernacular Heritage.”

75. Architects’ Council of Europe, “Leeuwarden Declaration.” The Architects’ Council of Europe organised in Leeuwarden a conference on the Adaptive Re-Use and Transition of Built Heritage which took place in the framework of the European Year of Cultural Heritage in 2018. The declaration is a result of this event. It is noteworthy that the focus of the declaration is on the adaptive reuse of industrial, religious, and military spaces.

76. ICOMOS, “International Charter for Cultural Heritage Tourism,” 14.

77. Arfa et al., “Adaptive Reuse,” 155.

78. ICOMOS, “The Valletta Principles”

79. ICOMOS Australia, “The Burra Charter.” It was first adopted in 1979; the current version was adopted in 2013.

80. ICOMOS, “Historic Areas”

81. The debate between Violet-Le-Duc and John Ruskin in this respect laid the foundation for conservation theory. According to Violet-Le-Duc, the restoration aimed to bring the monument back to its initial state, if necessary, by reconstructing demolished and missing parts to achieve a complete ‘stylistic unity.’ On the other extreme, seeing restoration as falsification, John Ruskin preferred to use the term ‘conservation’ instead of ‘restoration.’ The anti-restoration views of John Ruskin and William Morris were expressed in the founding manifesto of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB), which was founded in 1877 (SPAB, “The SPAB Manifesto”; Mazlum, “Koruma”). The manifesto was written by William Morris, Philip Webb, and other founder members in response to the conservation problems of the nineteenth century.

82. For this purpose, typological studies were carried out during the field surveys within the scope of the Kayakapı Project (Can, “Traditional Dwellings,” 35–40). Zeynep Ahunbay warns that typological studies and analogies fed by imagination cannot replace original documents (Ahunbay, “Rekonstrüksiyon,” 32).

83. ICOMOS, “Conservation and Restoration”

84. Dushkina, “Historic Reconstruction,” 91.

85. ICOMOS, “The Nara Document.” It was an outcome of the Nara Conference on Authenticity in Relation to the World Heritage Convention held in Nara, Japan from 1 November to 6 November 1994.

86. ICCROM, “The Riga Charter.” It was adopted by the regional conference by the Latvian National Commission for UNESCO – World Heritage Centre, ICCROM in Riga on 24 October 2000.

87. Dawans and Houbart, “Letter of the Charters,” 59.

88. Stanley-Price, “The Reconstruction of Ruins,” 32. Accordingly, when a structure of great importance to the identity of a place and the community is destroyed during a war, terrorist attack or disaster, reconstruction may be considered if it was well documented before demolition. Any reconstruction which does not rely on substantial evidence is denied. Nevertheless, it should also be noted that academics, conservationists, archaeologists, and philosophers do not even agree on the value of reconstruction of heritage damaged by war or disasters.

89. Scholars, in this respect, point out to a shift from material authenticity to a values-based approach (Orbaşlı, “Conservation Theory,” 163).

90. See Dushkina, “Historic Reconstruction”; and Stanley-Price, “The Reconstruction of Ruins.”

91. Stanley-Price, “The Reconstruction of Ruins,” 32. It is noteworthy that ‘reversibility’ in the context of conservation is considered ‘utopian’ by some scholars (Muñoz Viñas, “Contemporary Theory of Conservation,” 25).

92. Bold, “Reconstruction,” 3–4.

93. See Solmaz Şakar, “Kapadokya Kültürel Miras,” 336.

94. See note 32 above.

95. Art & Popular Culture, “Disneyfication.”

96. Francaviglia, “History after Disney,” 69.

97. Matusitz and Palermo, “Disneyfication of the World”

98. Tucker and Emge, “The Case of Cappadocia,” 50.

99. Can, “Traditional Dwellings,” 136.

100. Ibid. 24.

101. Ibid. 132–133.

102. See note 25 above.

103. Ousterhout, Visualizing Community, 18.

104. Dawans and Houbart, “Letter of the Charters,” 60.

105. Kip and Oevermann, “Neighbourhood Revitalisation”

106. Gotham, “Advancing Research,” 3. The term gentrification was initially formulated by Ruth Glass (Glass, London: Aspects of Change) to refer to ‘middle-class outsiders rehabilitating decaying historic buildings inhabited by low-income populations^’ in inner-city London (De Cesari and Dimova, “Gentrification,” 863; Zhua and González Martínez, “Gentrification,” 478).

107. Kevin Fox Gotham, who introduced the concept of ‘tourism gentrification’ for the first time in 2005, points out that until then ‘the impact of tourism on gentrification processes’ were mostly ignored. See Gotham, “Tourism Gentrification”; and Gotham, “Advancing Research.” Recently, Utku and Uludağ in “Uçhisar” discuss tourism gentrification in the context of Uçhisar in Cappadocia.

108. Even though not directly using the term Disneyfication, heritage and conservation policies warn against ‘stereotyping and depersonalisation’ and ‘irrational and inappropriate reconstruction work’ while taking measures in historic environments (ICOMOS, “Historic Areas”). On the other hand, ‘Disneyfication of heritage’ has taken place as a concept in the recent literature (see, among others, Bülow and Thomas, “Ethics of Reconstructing”).

109. ICOMOS, “The Valletta Principles”