NEWS: Nişanyan Houses in Turkish holiday town to be demolished

Nişanyan Houses in Turkish holiday town to be demolished
Thursday, August 19, 2010

VERCİHAN ZİFLİOĞLU

ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News

Already facing a prison sentence due to 16 different cases filed against him, author Sevan Nişanyan is now facing a demolition order on a hotel he owns in the village of Şirince in İzmir.

Nişanyan, who is also a linguist and academic, told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review that he would resist the demolition order for his Nişanyan Houses Hotel by every possible avenue.

“Those buildings are my children, each of them have my endless labor, creativity, sincerity and most importantly, sacrifice in them,” said Nişanyan. “What would you do if someone came with a bulldozer and killed your 16 children because of ideological prejudice and your identity? I will not limit myself to only protesting, let no one doubt this.”

The hotel owner said he would continue to operate the houses he has built with his own hands despite all the pressure. “Neither the threats I receive nor can the ideological pressure intimidate me. I will never, never give up on these houses. I do not intend to move anywhere else, either. They’ll need to kill me in order to make me give up on these houses.”

‘I have struggled for 20 years’

Nişanyan entered the tourism business in the early 2000s by restoring historic the Greek houses of Şirince, but a demolition order was issued for them as soon as the buildings were opened for service as a boutique hotel.

“That order was not carried out in those years,” said Nişanyan, who said he built 12 more houses in 2005 and 2006 in addition to the original historic buildings.

The new houses were built from mud bricks and stone in harmony with the 2,000-year-old tradition of the Aegean, Nişanyan said, adding that they were original enough to stand as examples of this method.

Sixteen different legal cases were filed against him in the months that followed the construction of the houses he said.

“The process regarding the demolition order was accelerated after my columns on the Turkish Armed Forces and [modern Turkish founder Mustafa Kemal] Atatürk in a newspaper,” he said.

“Şirince was a slowly dying agricultural village 20 years ago. I have transformed it to a center of attraction by my own means,” he said.

Two lawsuits on ‘zoning pollution’

Nişanyan has worked on the project of a “Mathematics Village” in Şirince in recent years in cooperation with Ali Nesin, the son of internationally known Turkish writer Aziz Nesin.

A legal case was also filed against Nişanyan and Nesin regarding the project, but the demolition order could not be executed due to pressure from public opinion and the village is now offering advanced mathematics education to 120 students.

“During this process I have experienced only hostility, doubt and hindrance from the authorities,” he said.

Nişanyan said his houses had been padlocked numerous times and that he had received countless threats.
“More than 100 cases were filed against me and demolition orders were issued for all the buildings I have built, including the henhouses,” Nişanyan said, counting the cases against him as seven for unsanctioned construction, two for zoning pollution and eight for padlock-breaking cases.

“The sentences [demanded] for all of them are at the upper limit and the total sentence could be 10 years [in prison]. An arrest order may be issued against me at any time, but I am not afraid,” he said.