Lınkages Between Cultural Landscapes, Settlement And Ethnıcıty: Example Of Duzce Ugursuyu And Aksu Watersheds

Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Civil Engineering, Architecture and Urban Planning Elites

Year: 2018

DOI: https://www.doi.org/10.33422/5th-caue.2018.02.43

[Fulltext PDF] 

Lınkages Between Cultural Landscapes, Settlement And Ethnıcıty: Example Of Duzce Ugursuyu And Aksu Watersheds

Pınar Gültekin ,Osman Uzun, Yaşar Selman Gültekin, Sinem Özdede and Sertaç Kaya

ABSTRACT: 

Rural settlements are environments where local architectural examples are widespread, and reflect the geographical conditions, cultural structure, and lifestyle of societies to spaces. Unlike cities that are increasingly similar to each other under the influence of globalization, rural areas are still peculiarly shaped by their geographical location, climate, traditions, worldview, religion, social structure, production, and consumption. However, the problem of uniformization imposed by globalization in urban areas poses a threat to rural areas of Turkey, as well as in Europe. The European Council for the Village and Small Town (ECOVAST) was founded in 1984 and its aims are: to foster economic, social and cultural vitality and the administrative identity of rural communities throughout Europe, and to safeguard, the sensible and imaginative renewal of constructed and natural environments of such communities. Turkey’s National Rural Development Strategy, which has been underway since 2014 and is scheduled to continue up to 2020, emphasizes improving the landscape in rural settlements, increasing the quality of life in rural communities, and protecting and developing environmental and cultural values within those areas. Düzce and its immediate surroundings, which are located in the western region near the Black Sea in Turkey, were determined as a study area, and have formed an important cultural mosaic with migrations from different regions. This cultural mosaic influenced the behavior and approaches of the first immigrant communities from their site selection to their settlement, and to current scale of the gardens. In addition to its cultural landscape values, Düzce is a rich area with its natural landscape values and is located in the center of two big cities, which are Ankara and Istanbul. The existing ethnic diversity in the Düzce Uğursuyu and Aksu basins has significant influence on settlement types in villages, rural architecture, livelihoods, worldviews, in cultural landscape design. In order to evaluate the relationship between settlement forms, ethnic structures and cultural landscapes of the villages in Düzce Ugursuyu and Aksu basins, 50 villages in the area were visited and were used for cultural landscape analysis. Within the scope of this aim, information about the importance of villages in the historical process, the existence of historical archaeological elements, local architectural structures, handmade crafts, religious places, festivals, ethnic structures, agricultural production forms, plateau traditions, organizational status, and monumental preservation, have been obtained. The data obtained from 50 villages were graded on a scale of 1 to 4, and feature tables related to villages that were created, and correlation analysis was performed via the IBM SPSS Statistics 22 program. As a result of the analysis, it was determined that there is a statistically significant relationship between ethnic structure, village settlement patterns and cultural landscaping elements. It has also been determined that the societies from the Caucaus Mountains, and Black Sea Region reflect their cultural characteristics effectively on their surrounding landscapes, and protect their identity to a large extent.
All the villages in the study area are grouped in regards to their characteristics and ethnic structures, such as being of Caucasian origin, Black Sea origin, Georgian origin, Manav origin, Balkan origin and mixed origins. The villages, which best reflect the cultural texture of each group were identified by a team consisting of five people. Strategies and suggestions were developed for the protection of the rural identities, enhancement of landscape values and the increase of prosperity levels of the identified villages.

Keywords: Cultural Landscape, Duzce, Ethnicity, Human, Settlement, Rural Area.