AN INVESTIGATION ON THE PRESERVATION OF PEOPLE’S HOUSES AND PEOPLE’S CULTURE

Abstract

The People's Houses (1932) was established following the closure of the Türk Ocakları (1912), which is the continuation of the Türk Derneği (1908) and the Türk Yurdu Cemiyeti (1911). And it has an ideal to improve Turkish people up to higher levels in social, economic and cultural aspects. People’s Houses organised conferences, courses, festivities and various artistic activities in their locality with a view to both educate and modernise people. Having basically nine offices, People’s Houses provided significant contributions to the Turkish culture by the folcloric and social culture activities that they realized in their local areas. People’s Houses were launched with two important missions. The first of them is a social reformist mission such as Türk Ocakları ve Köycüler Cemiyeti which has its roots in jon turks revolution. The other one is to initiate and execute the artistic and cultural activities that will put states’s westernization project into practice. This second mission’s the most important internal dilemma is the necessity to compromise the endevaours of introducing and familiarizing the westrern cultural forms with the dependency addiction of local compilation to create a national repertoire. In this respect, People’s Houses’ activities for cultural reform can be regarded as a Project by which Ziya Gökalps terms of hars and civilization are attempted to be carried out. In the present day; Intangible Cultural Heritage, identifed by communuties, groups and in some cases by individuals as the part of their cultural heritage in forms of applications, representations, narrations, knowledge, skills, and related to these also the tools, equipments and cultural space, is defined by UNESCO as a phenomenon which is conveyed from one generation to the next one and provides communities and groups’s interaction with their environment, nature and history and gives them an identity and feeling of continuation. In this way, it contributes to the respect that is had for cultural variety and human creativity. Depending on this definition and function, it can be stated that, People’s Houses transmitted Intangible Cultural Heritage and preserved culture during their era. By the mission they undertook and the functions they performed, People’s Houses, achieved the preservation of culture and conveyance of it to generations. In this study, a review will be carried out about the activities of peoples houses to preserve culture and contribution of those activities to the Turkish culture.