Scraping the layers: Tahsin Öz and his stylistic restorations in Topkapı Palace Museum

Abstract

State-led heritage conservation was first experienced in Tanzimat Period inOttoman Empire. State continued being the major custodian of cultural heritagethroughout the 1950s. The general approach towards conservation of these earlyyears was the maintenance of symbolic buildings that had been regarded as mon-uments. Yet, we can speak of a selective ideal of determining which monument toconserve and which period to exhibit.Starting his career as the chief accountant and later the deputy director of theMuseum of Antiquities, Tahsin Öz was among the people who dominated the fieldof heritage preservation in the early Republican years. He acted throughout hislife as an influential figure in decision making processes of heritage conservation.As one of the most important roles in his career, Öz was appointed as the directorof Topkapı Palace Museum, which became a museum in 1924 with the approval ofthe young parliament. Although much neglected and in need of urgent repair, thebuildings of the palace were still witnesses of the 19th century Ottoman taste. Un-til 1953, he was responsible and in charge of some rather ambitious restorations,which favored to erase the traces of one period and return back to a specific one.This paper aims to introduce the controversial approaches of Öz in TopkapiPalace Museum with an overview of what he realized and wrote, and focus simul-taneously on the atmosphere of preservation in Turkey until 1950s with voices ofintellectuals and professionals supporting or disagreeing his decisions.