Cities and cultural policies

I do not know why, but for a while, even though I knew the correct version, I mistakenly hummed İsmet Özel's verse "deaths are adept at linking to deaths" as "cities are adept at linking to cities." Realizing this, I was startled to think how I had come to substitute the city—the main stream of life—for death. Perhaps I had engaged too much with theses and environments expressing that globalization had brought cities to an end, turning them into soulless, standardized spaces linked to one another. Thus, an environment where life is standardized and differences pertaining to humans, culture, and the city are erased turned out to be the imaginary equivalent of death for me during this time: the death of the city.

We constantly complain that in the world we live in, cities are gradually moving away from their unique qualities under the influence of modernization first, and then globalization. Cities, each once possessing its own soul, color, and identity, are progressively transforming into a soulless parcel of the "global city" linked together by a global network of transportation, production, and consumption. As the processes of production and consumption commodify everything belonging to living spaces, culture loses all its authenticity and originality.

The process that transforms cities into soulless and cultureless urban centers also triggers a search to "find their identity" across all cities. Every city attempts to showcase itself by demonstrating a point of differentiation in the "market of global cities," and it mostly finds this difference within its own history. How strange it is that cities feel the need to find their distinction once again as a result of the suggestions of a global trend or global institutions. The UN, through UNESCO, and the EU, through its directives aimed at preserving historical heritage, provide incentives for every country and every city to highlight their own historical and cultural heritage.

It is said that one way—indeed the primary way—for the rebirth of cities in Türkiye is for local governments to focus more seriously on cultural activities. Naturally, however, what is understood by cultural activities is also of paramount importance. We now know that subjecting the city's residents to an oppression they have not experienced since Tamerlane in the name of raising the city's stature is not a cultural activity. The elitist arrogance reflected by such cultural activities does not confer an identity upon the city's inhabitants, and consequently, upon the city itself. For a city identity to take shape, first and foremost, the satisfaction and contentment levels of the people living in that city regarding their life there must be raised. Furthermore, since elitism generally creates a distance between the public and the administration, it also builds a wall of dissatisfaction.

The activities that municipalities have recently put forward in the name of culture often amount to bringing in a few pop music artists to entertain the public "for free." However, the levels of entertainment and culture often operate in inverse proportion to each other. These activities—undertaken sometimes to project an image for the city, and sometimes to gather as large a crowd as possible to generate a convertible-to-votes satisfaction—make no contribution whatsoever to the culture of that city. In fact, due to their dimensions of global popular consumption, such entertainments actually accelerate the loss of the city's cultural identity.

Konya Metropolitan Municipality recently spearheaded and hosted the Local Governments Culture Council, which brought together representatives of municipalities from every region of Türkiye. The objective of the council was stated as enabling local governments in Türkiye to benefit from one another's experiences in cultural policies and contributing to the development of a common understanding in this domain.

In his opening speech, Mayor Tahir Akyürek lamented that municipalities reduce the concept of cultural activity to entertainment events using whatever energy remains from their engineering activities—which are already overly decisive—while noting that the alternative is somewhat arduous and yields little political return. At the council, Ahmet Turan Alkan, Alparslan Açıkgenç, Şinasi Gündüz, Edibe Sözen, İlber Ortaylı, Rasim Özdenören, Necdet Subaşı, Burhanettin Tatar, Ayşe Önal, Hasan Kurt, and many academics discussed historical consciousness and its manifestation in cities, globalization, city and identity processes, and the relationship between the city and philosophy through their presentations and deliberations.

It is evident that having a permanent platform where local governments in Turkey can share their own knowledge and experience will significantly contribute to their acquiring a deep and broad horizon in the field of cultural policies. The officials of the Konya Municipality ought to be congratulated for pioneering such an initiative with an organization that was near-perfect.

Of course, the path for municipalities to revitalize their cities lies in turning toward more lasting, higher-quality endeavors. However, while doing so, one must avoid being drowned in the rush to merely save appearances. A city's distinctiveness can be highlighted by placing certain authentic elements on display, thereby projecting a certain facade. Yet, it must not be forgotten that for this distinctiveness to hold meaning for those living within the city, it is essential to maintain harmony and an open dialogue with the people of every city. Enhancing the satisfaction of a city's "inhabitants" regarding living in that city constitutes the main path toward the revival of those cities.