Return Migration, Place-Based Activities, and Rural Revitalization in the Cultural Landscape of Kemaliye, Türkiye

Return and resettlement are increasingly discussed as potential resources for rural revitalization, yet how these processes translate into place-based heritage and landscape action remains insufficiently understood. From a rural planning and cultural landscape conservation perspective, this study examines how emotional and narrative ties, return and resettlement trajectories, resource mobilization, and place-based activities interact in Kemaliye, a rural heritage settlement in Türkiye. Drawing on eight actors with different return and resettlement trajectories, the study combines qualitative thematic analysis in MAXQDA with an actor–activity two-mode network and Jaccard similarity analysis. The findings show that approach-oriented nostalgia can support return and action but is neither universal nor necessary. Resettlement involves the negotiation of local positioning, while resources are both brought into the locality and developed through local learning, relationships, and participation. These resources are translated into diverse place-based activities associated with heritage and landscape responsibility. However, such activities do not automatically generate rural revitalization. Their continuity depends on intergenerational transmission, local acceptance, institutional continuity, economic and technical capacity, everyday livability, and tourism carrying capacity. The study therefore conceptualizes rural revitalization as a conditional potential emerging through relational and feedback-based processes linking resettlement, resource mobilization, place-based activity, and heritage–landscape responsibility.