IN-PERSON: Prague – Section A

Abstract

After the Covid-19 pandemic, a rekindled interest in the twentieth century healthcare architecture put a spotlight on the abandoned tuberculosis sanatoria of the Turkish republican era as the reminders of the Kemalist healthcare revolutions. One reason for neglect is their mountainous/seaside settings which are reutilized with new constructions after the patiently awaited decay of the historic structures. For instance, the Ballıdağ Sanatorium Complex in Kastamonu (1954) –in irreversible ruins after years of abandonment– was recently demolished to be replaced by a new “private” hospital complex. This case demonstrates a substantial loss of heritage and other sanatoria face the same formidable end such as the first state sanatorium in Heybeli Island (1924) Istanbul, which was built in poverty of the warworn state, and the complex of Yamanlar Camp (1932) in Izmir. Despite or perhaps due to their neglected conditions, these sites are centers of attraction, often visited, documented and shared on social media with forlorn and/or rampageous narratives triggering similar responses, while the sites in ruins are admired. This study thus contextualizes these exemplary cases as symbolic manifestations of the political conflicts of the Kemalist versus contemporary Turkey and discusses the commemorative value of the ruins which trigger nostalgia for a past communal healthcare system in the turmoil of the (post?)-pandemic era.