Sinop Fortress Besieged by Concrete Time-Lapse Catapults

türkçe links to original Turkish article

(Hürriyet Newspaper, 2 July 2019)

Kaskians click here for background on this mysterious
group of people who were at odds with the Hittites.

pedestrian-friendly Sinop see this TNT report about
Sinop's enlightened ways vis-a-vis pedestrians.



 Sort of like man-made ivy that insidiously invades historic
fortress walls - let's call the 'kalekondu' a time-lapse catapult.

The encroachment of modern buildings on and around the walls of the
historic Sinop Fortress-Prison is a cause for concern.  The fortress was
built by the Kaskians 2,500 years ago and is on UNESCO's temporary
heritage list. 

Using the fortress's walls for foundations, people began to build
houses and buildings within the 12-meter fortress-preservation area
around 1982. There have been many efforts to have the 16 houses
built within the fortress, adjacent to it or right next to it razed but
so far without success.  Consequently, these "kalekondu" houses
(the upscale version of the low-end 'gecekondu' houses put up
illegally overnight) remain and their owners have even added PVC
windows and French balconies. 


The historic Sinop fortress-prison is in the foreground.

Tourism official Ali Yılmaz lamented that "these buildings are quite
ugly and wrong.  Sinop is a fortress city and we in the tourism industry
want the area around the fortress to be completely open.  The old Sinop
Prison within the fortress is a big tourist draw but these illegal buidings
are endangering the structure of the fortress and it may collapse in a
few years."


Not so long ago there were houses and homes within the walls
of Rumeli Hisarı on the Bosphorus in Istanbul.

Echoing Yılmaz, Hale Oğuz, the chief of the Sinop Friends of the
Environment Association, stated that "Sinop is well-complemented
by the fortress so its perifery should be open and nothing should be
built within its preservation area.  But the fortress has been subjected
to these 'kalekondus', which are built at the expense of the fortress's
walls.  It's essentially a murder of history. Really horrible.  Without
penalizing the 'kalekondu' residents and by paying them the market
rate, the buildings should be torn down and the fortress's perifery
kept open. We're hopefully expecting that this will happen."
(Ed. note: don't hold your breath Hale hanım.)


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