Turkey's national narratives
The Museum of National Archeology in Turkey houses one of the most impressive collections of antiquities in the Middle East, boasting around 800,000 artifacts in its inventory.
Now, hundreds of objects from the museum, which resides in the Ottoman-era imperial mint complex, known as the Darphane, on the grounds of Istanbul's Topkapi Palace, are being moved to two new warehouses dubbed "museum depots."
It isn't clear, however, which artifacts or how many will be moved. Still, this has raised questions about the connection between the historical narrative of a nation and the care and display of the tangible history from its past.
News of the looming change of address stirred a frenzy in the art-history and museum worlds. The opposition media quickly branded it a "scandal," reflecting the deep political divisions in the country that extend even to the handling of historical heritage.
For example, control of the separate Topkapi Palace Museum was transferred to the National Palaces Administration under the Office of the President in 2019, but the political opposition insists that authority should remain with the museum administration or the Ministry of Culture.
As to the move of the antiquities from Darphane, it is feared that they may be damaged or warehoused unsuitably at their new locations, which are far from the museum's restoration facilities. One is a warehouse connected to the now-retired Ataturk International Airport; the other sits farther away on the Asian side of the Bosporus.
Turkey has experienced a bonanza of archeological discoveries over the past few years. Last October alone, excavation unearthed an ancient temple dating back to the Stone Age, the tomb of the famous Greek astronomer Aratus and a Minoan-era harbor in the western coastline area of Didim.
Earlier, thousands of other artifacts were discovered during the construction of infrastructure megaprojects that began in 2004. During work on the tunnel for Istanbul's high-speed Marmaray railway line, archeologists found the ruins of a Byzantine church and footprints dating back to the Neolithic Age, among other marvels.
Many of the new discoveries have been stored in the Darphane site, placing what is claimed to have been a crippling burden on the old buildings - and hence at least one rationale for the move. But efforts to handle, move or restore ancient treasures have a checkered record in Turkey.
In 2015, ancient Roman mosaics at the Archeology Museum in the southern province of Hatay were damaged while being moved or restored. Last year, videos of men swinging sledgehammers at the restoration site of Istanbul's Galata Tower, built in the 14th century by the Genoese, went viral on social media.
The Ministry of Culture has tried to dispel fears about the exodus of material from the Darphane site. It says this is to protect the artifacts against potential natural disasters such as earthquakes, and to prepare new climate-controlled spaces for their display.
But criticism has yet to die down: The Darphane complex was previously not publicly deemed an earthquake risk, and it is not clear if all the museum's highly prized buildings in the Topkapi Palace will be returned to it or repurposed.
Museums in Turkey have gone through a renaissance in recent years. Fueled by government investment, curiosity in Turkey's Ottoman legacy has cropped up considerably and marks a departure from when Turkish intellectuals were not as interested in the pre-republican era.
Museums are also a bid to attract archeology enthusiasts, historians of Islam and art-loving tourists to Istanbul. For example, a newly refurbished museum in Beykoz district now showcases the 800-year story of glasswork in the Anatolian heartland of Turkey, dating from the Seljuks to the Ottomans.
The Turkish and Islamic Arts Museum in Istanbul houses a permanent collection of sacred relics, including old manuscripts and early copies of the Koran.
The politics of the museum as a public institution is notoriously contentious in most societies, throwing open grand debates about national identity and a people's connection to their past.
States in the Middle East are torn by the pull of history on one side and the desire for modernization on the other. Selective amnesia flirts with reinvention as societies negotiate how to memorialize their past.
The particular histories of minorities or the dispossessed are brushed aside in the invention of foundational narratives that keep afloat the state project. Museums play an evolving, and not negligible, function in the march of history.
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