“THE CONVERSION OF SPACES AND PLACES OF WORSHIP IN ANATOLIA”

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

We would like to extend a cordial invitation to ADIP’s international conference titled “The Conversion of Spaces and Places of Worship in Anatolia” which will take place online during the weekend of 10-11 of April 2021. The event will be held in English and Turkish with simultaneous translation.

The 2020 conversions of the two historic monuments of Hagia Sophia and Chora inspired us to organise an international conference on the subject of the conversion of spaces and places of worship within the broader religious and regional contexts. In the first of a series of three conferences, the regional focus will be limited to Anatolia (Asia Minor) which has been an area of great historical significance and activity where the presence many different beliefs triggered the conversion of places of worship after countless local and major conquests and reconquests. Zoroastrian, Nimrodian, Mithraic, and Anahitan traces replaced with Yezidi, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim spaces reveal the use, transformation and continuity of such places by different belief groups throughout history.

Our conference intends to be used as a platform for the discussion of the conversion of religious spaces and places of worship from the multi-disciplinary approaches of law, history, politics anthropology, architecture as well as heritage and urban studies. Over a long period covering the Roman, Byzantine, Seljuk, Ottoman, and Republican eras, the sacred spaces and places of worship to be discussed are pagan temples, mosques, tekkes, mevlevihanes, cemevis, zaviyes, a Yezidi cemetery and churches belonging to various denominations including Greek Orthodox, Syriac, Armenian, and Latin Catholic. Topics to be presented comprise of:

·       Conversion of religious spaces and places of worship into religious, secular, and alternate religious spaces as single and multiple conversions and reconversions.

·       Dispossession, destruction, damage and abandonment of religious spaces and places of worship.

·       Legal status and the recognition of the validity/ invalidity of religious spaces and places of worship.

·       Legal contestations, restrictions and prohibitions through national legislation vs. international agreements for the preservations of such spaces.

·       Transformation within spatial and urban contexts.

·       Conversion within the context of identity, interpretations, national memory, and reassignment.

Conference Organising Committee

Doğan Bermek

İştar Gözaydin

Yuri Stoyanov

Vanessa R. de Obaldía

www.adipanadolu.org