The Republic of Türkiye inherited one of the world’s richest architectural landscapes, spanning from Byzantine churches and Seljuk caravanserais to grand Ottoman palaces. This vast cultural repository serves as a testament to the diverse civilizations that have called the Anatolian peninsula home for millennia.
However, the nation also inherited the complex legacy of wars, forced displacement, fires, earthquakes, and decades of economic hardship. These factors left many of the country’s most significant monuments in a state of decay, desperately in need of comprehensive protection and restoration to prevent their total loss.
From the 1950s onwards, rapid, often unplanned urbanisation transformed cities such as Istanbul. Informal housing, expanding road networks, and the proliferation of reinforced concrete development placed mounting, often irreversible pressure on historic neighbourhoods, threatening the very fabric of the city’s ancient identity.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, born in Istanbul in 1954, witnessed these profound urban changes firsthand long before becoming the city’s metropolitan mayor in 1994. His early experiences with the city’s rapid evolution shaped his later political priorities regarding the built environment.
After founding the AK Party on August 14, 2001, and coming to power the following year, his governments increasingly placed the restoration and adaptive reuse of historical sites at the centre of Türkiye’s cultural heritage policy, viewing these structures as essential to national identity.
President Erdogan has repeatedly linked that vision to his own relationship with Istanbul. Speaking in 2025, he described serving the city first as mayor and later as prime minister and president, highlighting the reopening of Hagia Sophia Grand Mosque and the restoration of Rami Barracks among the projects through which he hoped to leave a lasting legacy.
As the AK Party marks its 25th anniversary, restoration, archaeology, and adaptive reuse have become defining features of its approach to cultural heritage. Officials say that approach has also evolved significantly over the past two decades, moving away from purely aesthetic fixes.
“It has evolved from one focused solely on physical repair towards a holistic model that combines scientific documentation, the protection of original values, sustainability, a balance between conservation and use, and bringing cultural assets together with society,” says Serdar Cam, deputy minister of Culture and Tourism.
Cam explains that the shift has meant preserving a building’s original function where possible and giving it an appropriate new use where necessary. This strategy ensures that historical sites remain vibrant, functional parts of modern urban life rather than static, abandoned relics.
Conservation, he adds, now extends beyond restoring physical structures to include documentation, maintenance, visitor infrastructure, and the long-term management of sites. The most prominent example in Cam’s account is the Hagia Sophia Grand Mosque. Since reopening for worship on July 24, 2020, it has remained accessible to both worshippers and visitors while conservation and structural reinforcement work continues under the supervision of a scientific committee.
Cam says the restoration effort extends well beyond individual monuments. Rather than focusing on a handful of landmarks, the government has pursued a broad, systematic programme. In Istanbul alone, he points to projects including Rami Barracks, the Maiden’s Tower, Galata Tower, and the former Defter-i Hakani Nezareti (Ministry of the Imperial Land Registry) building, alongside restoration work at the Sehzadebasi Tombs and Hatice Turhan Valide Sultan tomb.
The sites preserve the memory of key figures from the Ottoman dynasty: Hatice Turhan Valide Sultan was the mother of Sultan Mehmed IV and one of the empire’s influential queen mothers; Mustafa III, Selim III, and Mahmud II were Ottoman sultans, while the complex contains tombs associated with members of the imperial family. Beyond the city, the programme has included conservation work at the ancient city of Ani, Edirne’s Hidirlik Bastion, the Girls’ Monastery in Trabzon and Alanya Castle, while also expanding to industrial heritage through projects such as the former Adana Mensucat factory.
Speaking at the reopening of Yildiz Palace in July 2024, President Erdogan said around 6,000 foundation-owned cultural properties had been restored or repaired since 2002, while more than 120 restoration projects had also been completed abroad through TIKA, the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency. After a six-year restoration, Erdogan said the objective was not only to restore its walls, gardens, and interiors, but also to return one of Istanbul’s “places of memory” to public life by reopening long-inaccessible buildings as a museum for future generations.
“Each of these projects is also an instrument of diplomacy and prestige that introduces Türkiye’s cultural richness to the world,” Cam says, echoing a view frequently expressed by Culture and Tourism Minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy. He points to the Mor Ephrem Syriac Orthodox Church, inaugurated in Istanbul in 2023, as an example of that inclusive approach. President Erdogan attended the laying of its foundation stone in 2019 and later described the project as part of broader reforms concerning religious freedom and community foundations. He noted that 1,084 properties, including 113 belonging to the Syriac community, had been registered in the names of minority community foundations, while 20 minority places of worship had been restored and reopened.
Under the Legacy to the Future initiative, the ministry is expanding visitor infrastructure at archaeological sites through projects including a new visitor reception centre and theatre restoration at Ephesus, conservation and environmental works at Pergamon’s acropolis, and the ongoing excavation of the ancient city of Aphrodisias. These efforts are designed to boost tourism while ensuring the long-term preservation of the sites. “Ancient places that reach the present through meticulous restoration are schools that carry the wisdom of the past into today,” Huseyin Ozer, a primary school teacher, tells. Together, these projects reflect a conservation strategy that spans centuries, aiming to reconcile the demands of a modernising state with the preservation of its deep, multi-layered historical heritage.
Speaking at an international archaeology symposium in Ankara in August 2025, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan described Anatolia as a place where beliefs, cultures, languages and civilisations had intertwined over millenni
“It is of utmost importance to unearth, document, attentively protect and leave this treasure to next generations,” he said.
His administration, he said, has sought to build on that legacy by expanding resources devoted to archaeology.
Speaking at an international archaeology symposium in Ankara in August 2025, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan described Anatolia as a place where beliefs, cultures, languages and civilisations had intertwined over millennia, shaping humanity’s shared memory.
The results are perhaps most visible beneath modern-day Istanbul.
“The archaeological excavations carried out at Yenikapi, Sirkeci, Cagaloglu, Uskudar and Kadikoy areas in Istanbul produced finds of exceptional importance not only for Istanbul’s history, but for world history,” Hayri Fehmi Yilmaz, an art historian, tells.
At Yenikapi, the site of a major archaeological excavation uncovered during construction of Istanbul’s Marmaray rail project, he says excavations pushed back the city’s known history to the Neolithic era and revealed rare evidence of everyday life from the Byzantine and Ottoman periods.
Thousands of artefacts recovered from the site have since been conserved and added to museum collections across Türkiye.
According to Cam, archaeological work grew from 227 sites in 58 provinces in 2024 to 255 sites across 65 provinces in 2025, employing more than 2,000 archaeologists and art historians, along with more than 3,000 other workers.
Cam says the same conservation philosophy has been applied across projects of very different periods and purposes.
President Erdogan inaugurated Rami Library in January 2023 and said in 2025 that it had welcomed seven million visitors in its first two and a half years.
The project has also received international recognition.
In August 2026, Rami Library won the grand-scale category at the IFLA Green Library Awards after its transformation from a former military barracks into what organisers described as a climate-resilient urban commons.
Architect Sinan Genim believes the period has also seen stronger institutional support for heritage conservation.
“Important restoration work has been carried out across Türkiye, while projects such as Tas Tepeler have changed accepted ideas about archaeology and human history,” Genim tells.
Susin says the church has been warmly received not only by Syriacs in Türkiye and abroad, but also by other Christian and Muslim communities.
For educators, those investments also help bring history closer to younger generations.
Ozer says taking students to sites such as Rami Library, Hagia Sophia and Yildiz Palace transforms history from an abstract subject into something they can experience firsthand.