Unesco picking up the pieces from quakes’ cultural impact
As the humanitarian response enters a third week after earthquakes rocked Turkey and Syria, another kind of recovery effort is circling the region’s millenniaold cultural landmarks.
Unesco, the United Nations cultural agency, is assessing the extent of damage to World Heritage sites. Castles from the Crusades era, a fortress that hosted the Romans and the Ottomans, and a citadel in one of the oldest inhabited cities on Earth are among the disaster’s rubble.
Unesco assists with renovation and reconstruction work, says Krista Pikkat, director for culture and emergencies at Unesco, but it also attempts to rebuild what it calls ‘‘intangible cultural heritage’’.
‘‘We need to actually not only build back the buildings, but also bring back the communities, because without them, there is no continuation of cultural life. This is a source of their identity. This is where their roots are.’’
The February 6 earthquakes – of magnitudes 7.8 and 7.5 – killed more than 46,600 people and displaced thousands across Turkey and Syria. More than 93,000 buildings are completely or partially destroyed.
Unesco remotely monitors damage in disaster zones by using satellite images. Preliminary reports show that in Turkey, buildings crumpled across the city of Diyarbakır, home to the Diyarbakır Fortress and Hevsel Gardens, a World Heritage site that transcends the Roman, Sassanid, Byzantine, Islamic and Ottoman periods.
Important sites not on the Unesco list also suffered damage.
Much of the 2000-year-old Gaziantep Castle crumbled. The structure sits atop a hill in the city of Gaziantep, and carries both Roman and Byzantine history.
Local media reports also show that numerous mosques and churches of historical and cultural significance have been damaged in the cities of Antakya, Gaziantep, Malatya and Adıyaman.
Oya Pancaroglu, a professor of history of Islamic art and architecture at Bogazici University in Istanbul, says many historic cultural sites hold meaning across religions and speak to Turkey’s multifaith history, pointing to the Habib-i Neccar Mosque in Antakya (known as Antioch in ancient times), which was reduced to rubble in the quakes.
‘‘The site of the mosque is associated with a legendary local figure believed to have lived at the time of Jesus Christ and persecuted for his conversion to the Christian faith. It is thought that a mosque was built at this site in the period of the early Muslim conquests to recognise it as a site of monotheistic significance.’’
There is heightened concern for cultural sites in Syria, due to the damage wrought by its long civil war as well as the earthquakes.
Preservation of Aleppo will be a priority, according to Unesco. Aleppo is considered one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, and has been on the World Heritage List since 1986, and on the List of World Heritage in Danger since 2013.
‘‘The impacts of the earthquakes were very heavy there, because of the fact that already many of the buildings were in a very fragile state because of the conflict,’’ Pikkat says.
The 13th-century Citadel of Aleppo has suffered significant damage to its walls and towers, including its Ottoman Mill tower and surrounding Ottoman-era streets and dwellings.
The city’s historic markets have been compromised, and parts of the Old City Wall have collapsed. Satellite images retrieved by Unesco also show severe damage to the Bayt Ghazalah Palace, a sweeping structure from the Ottoman era.
About 160km southwest of Aleppo, the World Heritage sites Krac des Chevaliers and Qal’at Salah El-Din, castles that have stood since the Crusades, have cracks across the walls and collapsed towers.
Unesco and its officials will conduct thorough damage assessments in the coming days, and then develop response plans. This can mean determining if quick intervention is necessary to prevent further damage to a site. Unesco has a Heritage Emergency Fund for this purpose.
Unesco’s current project in Iraq provides a potential blueprint for what renovation work in Turkey and Syria may look like. The initiative in Mosul aims to rebuild the ancient city’s structures, including a mosque, a church, minarets and shrines, which were destroyed during the Islamic State’s occupation.
The project amassed US$105 million (NZ$170m) in international donations, and involves architects, engineers, construction specialists, UN officials, international experts, the local community and Iraqi youth.
‘‘We try to engage and empower local communities. So these are also the projects that allow us to provide jobs for local people, to provide training to them, because we engage them in these reconstruction efforts,’’ Pikkat says.
The recent destruction becomes part of the historic landscape, too.
‘‘This is not the first time these sites have been impacted by earthquakes. They reflect a kind of cultural resilience in the face of natural disaster,’’ Pancaroglu says.
‘‘Loss has been an intimate part of this heritage, which is not to minimise the impact of this last disaster on these sites, of course. We need to ask ourselves how we can preserve these sites for the future without erasing or camouflaging their complicated and cyclical histories.’’
‘‘These sites . . . reflect a kind of cultural resilience in the face of natural disaster.’’ Professor Oya Pancaroglu, Bogazici University, Istanbul