The question of sustainability through reuse in the case of the population-exchange heritage: a critical look at the reuse types and conservation status of the Bursa churches

This article examines the architectural and socio-cultural changes of the Bursa churches after the 1923 Population Exchange between Türkiye and Greece. Church architecture emerged in Anatolia in the 4th century CE and continued to develop throughout the Byzantine and Ottoman periods. If the takeover of Anatolian cities by the Ottoman state constituted the first significant historical threshold for the reuse of churches as mosques, the Turkish-Greek Population Exchange in 1923 constituted the second threshold. The Bursa Churches were subjected to physical and socio-cultural changes after 1923. Taking into account the current literature on reuse which highlights adaptive reuse practices that decrease energy use, and carbon emissions and contribute to social, cultural and economic sustainability; this study focuses on the critical evaluation of some early twentieth-century reuse practices of churches in Türkiye in terms of their contribution to the social and economic sustainability framework. As a methodology, to evaluate the social, economic and architectural sustainability of the Bursa churches, four different methods were used, and the data collected was holistically assessed to understand the sustainability of the reuse of the Bursa Churches. The four methods integrally utilized are multiple case studies, literature review and archival research, preparation of architectural drawings and conducting interviews. The results show that the introduction and removal of certain religious architectural elements during the conversion of the monuments vary for each structure. From the viewpoint of architectural conservation and sustainability of the monuments, the change in the social structure resulted in the architectural change as well as the change in the spirit of the place. On the other hand, due to economic reasons, the conversion process in the early years of the Turkish Republic was realized with minimum intervention. The paper ends with suggestions to enhance this unique heritage's social, economic, and physical sustainability.