Official and Major to Personal and Minor Heritages in Turkey

This talk will discuss the representation of official heritage in Turkey by focusing on the Panorama 1453 Museum, which tells the story of the Ottoman Conquest of Constantinople through a 360-degree panorama. This is a museum closely linked to the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his politics that appeals to a glorious origin story for Turkey, aligning with a conservative Islamist agenda. The talk will discuss what this research led to and, exploring how memory mapping and filmmaking can be used to represent hidden heritages as alternative platforms for memory practices of these marginal communities, using the case study of the Greek ‘Rum’ communities of Istanbul.