The Hrant Dink Foundation has visualized the results of their project of recording the Armenian, Greek, Syriac, and Jewish cultural heritage in Turkey through the interactive online Turkey Cultural Heritage map.

The map comprises historical information, photographs, registration information, and approximate geographical coordinates of churches, schools, synagogue, monasteries, cemeteries, orphanages, hospitals, and chapels, and is designed to grow with contributions from its users.

The map, which was prepared by information from printed primary and secondary sources, as well as material from various archives, including the Ottoman Archives of the Prime Minister’s Office, features about 9,250 buildings - 4,250 are Armenian, 4,050 are Greek, 675 are Syriac, and 300 are Jewish. Through this first version of the Turkey Cultural Heritage map, users can search for buildings and places with both their current and old names and by using different filtering criteria such as the communities to which the buildings belong, and the buildings’ original and current functions. It is our hope that the map will meet the needs of diverse users, from researchers and students to travelers and those who miss their homelands, and that it will develop and flourish with their suggestions, additions, and corrections.

Kayseri with its Armenian and Greek Cultural Heritage

Information collected via a literature search will be updated and expanded by means of field work. The first such field work has been conducted in Kayseri, whose multi-cultural past in not widely known. The results of the field work, organized in collaboration with the Association for the Protection of Cultural Heritage and HAYCAR, has been published, in Turkish and English, in a book entitled Kayseri with its Armenian and Greek Cultural Heritage. The book is a 2015 photographic memoir of the cultural heritage left by the Armenian and Greek communities, who constituted one-third of the population of the Kayseri Province at the end of the 19th century. The inventory of Armenian and Greek public cultural heritage in Kayseri, which is accompanied by maps and photographs, includes a list of 18 buildings still standing. The book can be ordered free of change from the Hrant Dink Foundation.