KARANLIK GEÇMİŞTEN KARANLIK MİRASA: YASSIADA VE ROBBEN ADASI’NDA HAFIZA MEKÂNLARININ İNŞASI

Abstract

This study discusses how Yassıada in the Sea of Marmara, officially renamed as Democracy and Freedom Island, and Robben Island of South Africa, which is on the UNESCO World Heritage List, have been constructed as sites of memory in the context of dark heritage. The transformation of these two places, which have their own historical, political, and social backgrounds in different geographies but are both historically identified with punishment, isolation, suffering, and death, is worth examining. This study explores the reorganization and opening of these islands to visitors with both material and non-material interventions organized around similar and/or different themes. In this regard, it problematizes efforts to articulate sites of memory, constructed as spaces where nation-states confront their dark pasts, with collective memory for political purposes. It also addresses the relationship between dark heritage management and the presentation of sites of memory as tourism centers with commercial concerns. In addition, this study questions to what extent sites of memory pay regard to the rights and participation demands of different social actors as spaces where dark heritage is exhibited and supported by certain discourses.