From Worship Places to Waste: Abandoned and Forgotten Worship Places

Dr. Veysel DİNLER, Hitit University

Anatolian geography has hosted many civilizations throughout history. In these lands, numerous faith communities have established worship places specific to their beliefs, and they lived their beliefs freely. The extraordinarily diverse and different beliefs, unfortunately, do not show the same feature today. Christians churches were devastated by neglect or converted into a mosque, especially after Christians left Turkey between 1923-1925 during the great population exchange.  The churches left behind by immigrants were not sufficiently protected. Except for a few of them with touristic features, the rest have turned into ruins due to neglect and disregard. Like all abandoned buildings, no valuables were left in them. In this paper, some examples from Çorum and Isparta will focus on churches that have turned into ruins from places of worship, and a critical approach will be brought to the policy of (not) protecting places of worship.