Şerifoğlu T. E.(Yürütücü), Büyüksaraç G. (Yürütücü), Hançer İ.(Yürütücü), Collar A.(Yürütücü), Bayraktar U.(Yürütücü), Yılmaz Bayraktar B.(Yürütücü), et al.
Diğer Ülkelerden Üniversiteler Tarafından Desteklenmiş Proje, 2020 - 2021
Forced displacement is one of the most pressing issues in the Middle East, a region long marked by political unrest, war and violence.
Many communities across the region have been forced to leave their homelands throughout the recent and more distant past. Forced
migration is an extremely painful process, which alienates people from their cultural landscape and disrupts their sense of place,
belonging and identity. Displaced people must find ways of maintaining cultural ties to their places of origin, as well as relating to
cultural elements in their new homes to begin to identify with a new heritage. This project will engage with these processes for
contemporary migrants and the descendants of past migrants, focusing on Cilicia (modern day Adana and Mersin provinces) in
southern Turkey. Cilicia has always been home to a diversity of Muslim and non-Muslim communities, and has experienced ebbs and
flows in these communities. We will work with two groups of forced migrants, to engage with their identification with cultural
heritage sites in Cilicia: the Armenian and other Christian communities in Lebanon, as descendants of Christians who left Cilicia in
the early 20 th century; and Syrian migrants of varying ethnic and religious backgrounds, including Christians, who have recently
made Cilicia their new home. The project will examine how these two groups perceive the cultural heritage of Cilicia, particularly the
Christian and Muslim heritage landmarks of the region to which they can directly relate. The local Christians of Cilicia will also be
included to study their perceptions of cultural heritage. We aim to bring together the previous and current inhabitants for a series of
community-involved heritage preservation and management activities (workshops, trainings in methods of documentation and
dissemination of knowledge), and work on ways of utilising cultural tourism for economic vitality and cultural integration.