Greek Public Spaces as Unsettling Cultural Heritage

Dark heritage are places that society rejects because they remind flash memory events, such as terrorism, genocide, war, that cause the separation of the life periods of society and individuals, in the collective memory. With the signing of the "Convention and Protocol Concerning the Exchange of Turkish and Greek People" dated January 30, 1923, the forced exchange, which is a flash memory event, took place between Turkey and Greece. With the population exchange, Turks living in Greece were settled in the settlements abandoned by the Greeks in Anatolia. The public places in the abandoned Greek villages before the exchangees came were destroyed by the Turkish residents. In this study, it has been investigated that the Greek public places that have not been destroyed are used by the exchangees or they are perceived as dark heritage and not used. In the study, Commented City Walks method, in which spatial memory can be traced, was used. After the population exchange, Bursa Görükle (Kouvaklia) Neighborhood where the exchangees from Kavala and Thessaloniki villages settled, and Gölyazı (Apolyont) village where Ottoman Turks and the exchangees from Thessaloniki Florina lived together were chosen as the field study. As a result of the study, it was seen that the exchangees who settled in Görükle did not perceive the Greek public places as disturbing and used them because they did not witness the Greek occupation in Anatolia. It has been revealed that the Greek occupation, which is a flash memory event, took place in the collective memory of the Turks living with the Greeks in the same village in Gölyazı, affected the exchangee’s collective memory, and that the Greek public places were not used as an dark heritage, were destroyed over time and were not remembered.