The Responsibility to Preserve and Transmit Anatolia’s Cultural Heritage

“What has been entrusted to us? These are the intrinsic values rooted in this land that must be passed down from the past to the future, as they have shaped our present. They could be a major archaeological site, such as Ephesus, or a shrine in any region. They could also be traces of past events in the region. At the very least, they must be documented and passed on to future generations. However, we must not impose our current perspective or problems onto the past. We must not politicise the past. Science is not the monopoly of any single person. Recognise that the past belongs to no one, and that concentrating knowledge in one person is wrong. We must view it as humanity’s shared knowledge and establish collaborations based on knowledge itself, not on ‘you and me’.”