Old mansion in Cental Anatolia becoming hotel

Thursday, August 4, 2011

VERCİHAN ZİFLİOĞLLU

ISTANBUL – Hürriyet Daily News

Gülbenkay Mansion in the central province of Kayseri is located only 100 meters from the historical American High School in the district of Talas.

The historical Gülbenkyan Mansion, which was originally owned by a prominent Armenian family in Turkey’s central Kayseri province, will be transformed into a boutique hotel by a businessman who has pledged nearly $1 million for its restoration. The mansion’s original owner was an eminent Ottoman citizen of Armenian descent who influenced the birth of the international oil industry.

“It is such a pretty edifice that it would have been selfish to withhold such beauty from [other] people. For that reason, we thought it appropriate to open the building as a hotel. There is a magnificent ceiling on the mansion’s upper story that seems reminiscent of a dome. A cross has been depicted; there are paintings in different compartments; the woodwork features wondrous pieces of art,” businessman Necip Dinçer told the Hürriyet Daily News via e-mail.

The mansion was originally owned by Kalust Gülbenkyan and his family, who also own the Calouste Gülbenkyan Museum in Lisbon.

Dinçer said he had visited the forlorn building several times and immediately contacted the mansion’s previous owners in Istanbul when he heard it was going to be put on sale. The permit for the restoration work has been obtained, Dinçer said, and the mansion will be opened as a hotel immediately after the renovation work is complete.

The mansion is located only some 100 meters from the historical American High School in the district of Talas in Kayseri, Dinçer said. Various stories are circulated among the locals regarding the Gülbenkyan family, he added.

“I am in possession of certain information [regarding Gülbenkyan, including that] he was from Talas, and that he was arrested in Sivas, then migrated to Istanbul and later moved abroad. It is also said he had close connections with the Ottoman dynasty. Had the family been living in Kayseri today, an intellectual with such tastes [back] in that time would certainly have been a citizen beneficial to [the city,]” Dinçer said.

Kalust Gülbenkyan, an Ottoman citizen of Armenian ancestry, played an important role in the birth of the international oil industry and led efforts to convince Sultan Abdülhamid II, also dubbed the “Red Sultan,” to purchase oil fields near the city of Mosul in present day northern Iraq.

Beyzade Bülent Osman, one of Abdülhamit II’s grandsons, confirmed this knowledge during an interview he gave to the Daily News last year.

‘Kayseri has been spent out’

“This place smells profusely of history; a rare settlement that still bears memories of old, though they are a bit tired,” Dinçer said, adding that he was born in Kayseri himself and that the district of Talas bore a special significance for him.

The tourism potential of the city still remains untapped, according to Dinçer, who claimed that Kayseri is a city that has been spent out over the years.

“Historical buildings were demolished and replaced with new ones. Ignorant and unconscious behavior de-personalized this city, whose roots go far back in time. Buildings 15 stories high were constructed over historical houses and mansions that were demolished. Only a tiny portion of Talas’ remains have been preserved, and that was through personal efforts of individuals,” he said.

Dinçer said he has been striving for years alongside the chamber of commerce and the tourism association to help preserve the historical fabric of the city, but they still could not exert enough influence, he added.

“Because the only [thing] the city’s administrators believe in is opportunism,” he said.

“When this mansion is up and running, we want the Armenians and Greeks of Kayseri to come here and see this edifice,” Dinçer said. “We are going to strive for [them] to remember their own cultures and the traces they left behind and to come over here.

“Those governing us are to blame for the causes of this lag. The incapability to promote to the world Anatolia, the bearer of thousands of years of culture, is the product of a mindset that [sails] in the opposite direction of where [the rest of] the world is going,” he said, adding that there had been some new momentum in recent years regarding tourism in Anatolia.

The name of the mansion will remain as “Gülbenkyan” even after the building is transformed into a boutique hotel, he said.

“We need the [kind of] sensitivity that will save the rest of Talas and win it for tourism,” he said.