One of our Dying Cultural Assets: The Kursunluoglu Konak (Mansion) in Denizli

Abstract

The historical Turkish houses constitute the structural unit that passed on the Turkish customs and traditions from one generation to the next. Examples to these houses in Denizli have been to a great extent destroyed as a result of negligence, natural disasters such as earthquake and fire as well as due to the process of rapid change brought about by industrialization; the remaining houses are very few in number taking into account those in the Musa, Caybasi and Kayalik neighborhoods. The Kursunluoglu Konak (Mansion) in Denizli also constituted an example to these historical Turkish houses which had been destroyed due to a fire in 2004. The features and the materials used during construction closely mimic one another in the plans of these houses located in Western Anatolian cities such as Mug la, Birgi and Kula which are very similar to Denizli in terms of weather and occupation; that is to say, it is possible to determine similarities in the features in most of Anatolia and the Balkans. Constituting one of Denizli's cultural and ethnographical priceless assets, Kursunluoglu Konak also embodies these common characteristics. The only remnants from the konak that has reached to the present are the information and photographs mentioned in the article.