Brooms raised to protect Denizli’s stone buildings

DENİZLİ - Doğan News Agency

DHA Photo

By sweeping the floors with their brooms, members of the Chamber of Architects in the Aegean province of Denizli have protested the municipality’s decision to demolish a series of historic stone buildings.

Some 77-year-old abandoned workshops, currently in the backyard of a high school adjacent to the Denizli Govenorate, have deliberately been ignored by the municipality, the chamber’s president Cüneyt Zeytinci said in a statement.

“These stone buildings are important structures from the early Republican era. The municipality does not clean them, so that people will be tired and accept their removal,” Zeytinci added.

The Ministry of Culture had decided to build an archaeology museum in Denizli with a project financed by prominent businessman Ahmet Nazif Zorlu.

A court had stopped the construction with a stay of execution order over the complaint filed by the chamber, which objected to the project to prevent the demolition of the old stone buildings.

After thanking Zorlu for financing the project, Zeytinci said the archaeology museum “can be built without demolishing historical buildings, which are also earthquake-proof.”

“You can’t protect history by destroying history,” he said, adding the buildings were “the unique symbols of the vocational education project of the Republic.”

During the protest, which was also supported by main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) deputy Melika Basma, some 40 architects swept the floors of the old buildings for one hour.

From its establishment in 1923 into the 1950s, vocational education, particularly in the countryside, has been one of the main focuses of the Republic of Turkey.