Türkiye'de sanat/mimarlık tarihi disiplininin kuruluşunda Ernst Diez ve "Türk sanatı"
Ernst Diez and his "Turkish art" in the establishment of the art/architecture history discipline in Turkey
Yazar: CEREN VERBOWSKI
Danışman: YRD. DOÇ. DR. VESİLE GÜL CEPHANECİGİL
İstanbul Teknik Üniversitesi / Fen Bilimleri Enstitüsü / Mimarlık Ana Bilim Dalı
Derece: Yüksek Lisans, 2015
Konu: Mimarlık = Architecture ; Sanat Tarihi = Art History

Özet:
Bu çalışmada, Türkiye'de sanat tarihinin bir disiplin olarak ortaya çıkmasının başlangıcı olarak Ernst Diez'in 1943 yılında İstanbul Üniversitesi'ne davet edilerek Türkiye'deki ilk sanat tarihi kürsüsünü kurma süreci, bu sırada kaleme aldığı ders kitabı 'Türk Sanatı' ve Türkiye'de kitaba karşı oluşan tepki ele alınmıştır. Çalışmanın amacı, Viyana Okulu'ndan bir sanat tarihçisi olan Diez'in 'Türk Sanatı'nın, dönemin tarihçi, siyasetçi ve tarihçi-siyasetçilerinin Türk Tarih Tezi'ni besleyecek bir disiplin olarak sanat/mimarlık tarihinden beklentileri ile bu beklentileri karşılayacağı düşünülen Viyana Okulu'nun karşı karşıya gelmesinin somutlaştığı bir örnek olarak ele alınmasıdır.
Çalışmanın ikinci bölümünde, Türk milliyetçiliği ve sanat/mimarlık tarihi ile arasındaki ilişkinin açıklanması hedeflenmiştir. Bu amaçla, Türk milliyetçiliğinin 19. yüzyıla uzanan geçmişi, ilk milliyetçi oluşumlar ve Cumhuriyet'in kurulmasından sonra oluşturulan yeni resmi tarih söyleminin ele alınmasının ardından, bu söylemin sanat/mimarlık tarihi alanındaki uzantıları ve sanat/mimarlık tarihine dair ilk oluşumlar incelenmiştir.
Üçüncü bölüm, Diez'in yaklaşımının arka planını oluşturan Viyana Okulu'na, Viyana ile erken Cumhuriyet dönemi aydınları arasındaki köprülere ve Türkiye'deki aydınların dikkatini çeken Josef Strzygowski ve Heinrich Glück gibi isimlerin Türk sanatına yaklaşımlarına ayrılmıştır. Bu bölümde, Türkiye'de ilk sanat tarihi kürsüsünü kurmak üzere Viyana Okulu'ndan bir sanat tarihçisinin davet edilmesinin sebeplerinin ve bu ekolden beklentilerin açıklığa kavuşturulması amaçlanmıştır.
Ernst Diez'in Türkiye'deki öğretim hayatı ve Türkiye'de sanat ve mimarlık tarihi disiplinlerinin temelini oluşturan 'Türk-İslâm San'atı Kürsüsü'nün kuruluş yılları, tez çalışmasının dördüncü bölümünde incelenmiştir. Bölümün ağırlık noktasını ise, Diez'in üniversiteden uzaklaştırılmasına sebep olan kitabı 'Türk Sanatı', kitaba yöneltilen eleştiriler ve üniversitede yürütülen soruşturma oluşturmaktadır. Diez'in öğretim hayatı hakkında bilgi için, İstanbul Üniversitesi ve Yıldız Teknik Üniversitesi'nin arşivleri ile Başbakanlık Devlet Arşivleri'ne danışılmıştır. 'Türk Sanatı'nın yarattığı tepkinin basına yansıyan yüzünü incelemek için ise dönemin yayın organları taranmıştır.
Ekler bölümünde, Diez'in kısa bir biyografisi, belgeler vasıtasıyla Türkiye'deki öğretim hayatının dökümü, 'Türk Sanatı' üzerine inceleme yazılarının kronolojisi, inceleme yazılarından örnekler, İstanbul Üniversitesi'nden ayrılma süreci üzerine basında çıkan bazı önemli haberler, arşiv belgelerinden örnekler ve Diez'in kapsamlı bir bibliyografyası sunulmuştur.

Abstract:
The establishing of the art history and architectural history disciplines in Turkey were closely interlinked as they were in other countries. Until the emerging of architectural history as a separate discipline in the 1950s, studies relating to the history of architecture were commonly conducted in art historical institutions, but with the evolving meaning of architecture as a profession, the place of architectural history studies has changed as well. While architectural history began to become confined within the walls of architecture schools, art history did not leave architecture outside of its boundaries even though its methods and outlook on theory differed from those of architectural history. Therefore, the founding of the first department of art history in Turkey represents a turning point for the establishment of both disciplines.
The Chair of History of Turkish-Islamic Art established in Istanbul University in 1943 by Ernst Diez, an art historian of the famous Vienna School, marks the beginning of the institutionalization of art history in Turkey. During his time in Turkey, he maintained his chair at Istanbul University with the exception of his internment period in Istanbul and Kırşehir for a year and a half in 1944 and 1945. After his internment he resumed teaching at Istanbul University while beginning to teach history of Turkish and Islamic art and architecture to various departments of Devlet Güzel Sanatlar Akademisi [State Academy of Fine Arts] and to the architecture students of İstanbul Teknik Okulu [Technical School of Istanbul], entering the domain of art and architecture education in Turkey.
Diez's "Türk Sanatı" [Turkish Art], published as a textbook by Istanbul University's Faculty of Letters in 1946, created a reaction amongst a number of intellectuals that expanded with the appearance of multiple negative reviews in media. Istanbul University, taking notice of the allegations, started investigating the issue towards the end of 1948. The debate between the Faculty of Letters who intended to keep Diez as a faculty member and the university senate who opposed lasted for months. As a result, Diez's contract with Istanbul University was not renewed and he left the university in June 1949. Diez also had to leave İstanbul Teknik Okulu at the end of 1949 due to its architecture department being temporarily shut down. It is still unclear whether he left Devlet Güzel Sanatlar Akademisi in October 1949 or stayed another year as there is not enough documentation available, yet it is known that he was back in Vienna by 1950.
In this thesis, the founding of this first art history chair of Turkey and the abrupt ending to Diez's employment at Istanbul University due to the reaction to his book 'Türk Sanatı' are examined as a case demonstrating the expectations of the newly founded Republic from disciplines like art/architecture history and archaeology in the years of nation building and how Diez's notion of Turkish art clashed with the official historical discourse, the so-called 'Turkish History Thesis'.
In order to depict a clear picture of the expectations and the rhetoric of the Republic, the second section of this thesis aims to explain the foundations and history of Turkish nationalism and its first institutions, followed by the first institutions relating to art/architecture history in Turkey. Turkish nationalism was an ideology that surfaced during the final years of the Ottoman Empire which was in need of a notion to define its people as one. While Ottomanism and Islamism were the other influential ideologies present, Turkish nationalism grew as the effect of Turcology studies which had started outside the borders reached Ottoman Empire and the Pan-Turkism movement was brought over by the 'Outside Turks' when they fled from the Czarist Russia.
After the Turkish Republic was founded, the young state attempted to form a new historical discourse to establish the idea of a nation state. The Turkish History Thesis, formed in late 1920s and early 1930s, presented the Turkish people as the source of many major civilizations of the world, with a history that went back to ancient times. The old indigenous cultures of Anatolia were depicted as Turks, while the second linear narrative followed the nomadic Turks from Central Asia to Anatolia. In this rhetoric, Turks were represented by the ancient inhabitants of Anatolia and the nomadic tribes arriving from Central Asia simultaneously, hence claiming the role of a vast cultural influence on all cultures of Eurasia and ownership of Anatolia at the same time.
As in every nation building process, many disciplines were employed to aid this new historical discourse. Since art is always viewed as a crucial part to a nation's culture, relevant disciplines had to carry a certain responsibility as well. While archaeology was expected to act as the tool to collect new evidence to support these theories, art history was meant to conceptualize Turkish art and create a synthesis of the past and present findings. Therefore, art/architecture history was not neglected during the process of the writing of the Turkish History Thesis and texts on the art and architecture of Turks throughout the history were produced with the initiative of the state. These texts, written by scholars such as Celâl Esad Arseven and Halil Edhem, also reflected the rhetoric of the Turkish History Thesis with some exceptions.
With the intention of depicting Diez's background and the interest of the Republic in Vienna School, the third part of this study aims to examine the school's history and Diez's colleagues' approach to Turkish art while pointing out the various relations between the intellectuals of Turkey and Vienna. As the appointing of Ernst Diez to the first chair of art history at Istanbul University in 1943 marked the establishing of art history as a discipline in Turkey, it was clear that it was not a coincidence that Diez was a scholar from the Vienna School of art history. Vienna School, with its history dating back to 1847, represented a common methodology and appreciation of systematic research despite harbouring different approaches to the universal history of art. Diez can easily be viewed as a representative of the institute of Josef Strzygowski, a prominent figure in the history of art history, as he first was a student of Strzygowski at the University of Graz where he completed his dissertation under Strzygowski's supervision and later became Strzygowski's assistant along with Heinrich Glück at the I. Kunsthistorische Institut [I. Institute of Art History] at the University of Vienna.
I. Kunsthistorische Institut was founded by Strzygowski in 1909 after he caused a division within the art history department when he was assigned to one of the two chairs of art history following the death of Franz Wickhoff. Strzygowski's views, following the transmigration of tribes and looking for the source of all European art in the art of the East and the North, differed from his neo-humanist colleagues' in Vienna vastly. It was Strzygowski and his students' views on Turkish art that had caught the attention of Turkish scholars such as Fuat Köprülü, a historian and later a politician, who took it upon himself to make their ideas known in Turkey after the appearing of two prominent texts by Glück and Strzygowski in 1917. While the cultural relations between Vienna and the intellectuals of the late Ottoman/early Republic era continued, attempts to invite an art historian from the Vienna School to establish the first chair of art history began in 1939, although Ernst Diez was invited by Istanbul University and not as a result of the attempts by the Ministry of Education.
The founding years of the first department of art history and Ernst Diez's years in Turkey are explained in the fourth section of this thesis, with a special focus on Diez's book 'Türk Sanatı' that brought the end of his employment at Istanbul University. In this section, the book's approach to the idea of Turkish art, cultural interactions and various periods of 'Turkish art' is analyzed followed by an examination of the reviews that appeared in media and the investigation that was carried out in Istanbul University.
While it seems clear that Diez was an art historian who advocated interactions and mutual artistic influences between cultures, it was also apparent that the newly founded Republic was in search of a rhetoric that bestowed a prominent role upon Turkish art in the universal history of art, as evidenced by the Turkish History Thesis that was composed more than a decade earlier.
As Diez traced the history of Turkish art from 7th century Central Asia to the end of Ottoman Empire in early 20th century, he examined the various cultural influences of other peoples on Turkish art. His book put a special emphasis on the decorative arts of the nomadic Turks and the architecture of the Seljuks and the Ottomans. Since he believed Armenian and Byzantine building traditions to have the biggest influence on Seljuk and Ottoman architecture, references to Armenian and Byzantine architecture became a common theme in his 'Türk Sanatı'.
This approach openly clashed with the Turkish History Thesis which, despite being altered over time, was already absorbed in the psyche of the society. The role of Armenian architecture in Diez's narrative contradicted the official discourse's presentation of indigenous Anatolian cultures; Turks had to be the true owners of Anatolia, having settled in this land in ancient times and being the main source of all other Anatolian cultures that came after. This caused a stir as he presented Armenian art as a source for Seljuk art.
Another aspect of 'Türk Sanatı' that was widely criticized was its approach to the relation of the great imperial mosques and the Church of Hagia Sophia, a grand Byzantine monument in Istanbul. Here Diez reflected the views of many Western scholars before him, pointing out the resemblance between said buildings and appointing the Church of Hagia Sophia/Byzantine architecture as the main source of inspiration for the religious architecture of the Ottoman era. However, he did not depict this influence as a mere imitation and instead presented it as somewhat of a rivalry and a drive to surpass a great monument of architecture. Yet this was not the expectation of the interested parties such as academy teachers, architects and archaeologists whose favored rhetoric had been that Turkish architecture had always emphasized the dome and possessed an innate monumentality. The distinction made by Diez between a Turkish 'folk art' and a 'Turkish-Islamic state art' was also widely criticized. In this categorization, Ottoman art was clearly defined as 'state art', formed by influences other than Turkish, such as the Greek, Persian and Islamic cultures, and entirely foreign to the essence of the 'folk art' of the nomadic Turks. This approach meant that Diez did not argue for an unchanging essence of the Turkish art that would have aligned with the official discourse.
Even though Diez was invited to Turkey as a representative of the Vienna School, he did not receive the same appreciation in Turkey as his professor Josef Strzygowski and his colleague Heinrich Glück for a number of reasons. Vienna School had entered the field of view of Turkish nationalism with texts by Strzygowski and Glück as early as 1917 and expectations of a reinforcement of the Turkish identity by this school were formed, as their ideas on Turkish art held a great value for the intellectuals of the late Ottoman/early Republic era. While Glück believed in a constant essence of Turkish art that was misunderstood and underrated by the Western world for centuries, Strzygowski assigned a crucial role to the art of the nomadic Turks in the forming of all European art, depicting them as the link between Europe and the art of the Aryan people from the North. Diez, despite sharing a similar outlook on the universal history of art, did not mirror his colleagues' views on Turkish art entirely and mainly focused on cultural interactions with indigenous Anatolian cultures.
Yet it is more important to examine the differences between their general approach to the universal art history and the texts that reached the Turkish readers at the time of their publishing. As Glück was in closer contact with the Turkish readers as a result of his numerous travels to Turkey, he shared their concerns more directly and reflected this in his writing. Hence his views generally received a positive reaction in Turkey. Strzygowski's views, however, had certain aspects that would potentially have been troubling to the same audience, like his notion of Armenian art and architecture as a source/carrier for Aryan art which was quietly reflected in Diez's book and turned into one of the most problematic points of the debate in Turkey. As his views on Armenian art and architecture remained present in the background of Diez's 'Türk Sanatı' which had several references to Strzygowski's 'Die Baukunst der Armenier und Europa' [The architecture of Armenians and Europe], Strzygowski's own texts on Turkish art were mostly free of these particular ideas. Since the only texts by Strzygowski that were translated to Turkish are those relating to Turkish art, the general opinion on Strzygowski in Turkey was formed on texts that did not present the crucial role that he assigned to Armenian art and architecture. Such differences help to explain why these scholars were perceived differently from each other in Turkey and why Diez's employment at Istanbul University, the oldest higher education institution in Turkey, came to an end despite the fact that he was from Vienna School, a school of art history that had many expectations attached to it in Turkey.
Despite having to leave Istanbul University after 6 years, Diez left behind a generation of alumni who continued to solidify the foundations of the art history discipline in Turkey. The relation of the discipline in Turkey with Vienna School of art history once again became clear in 1954 when another student of Strzygowski, Katharina Otto-Dorn was appointed to hold the second chair of art history in Turkey at Dil ve Tarih-Coğrafya Fakültesi [Faculty of Language, History and Geography] in Ankara. Diez's and Otto-Dorn's students, such as Oktay Aslanapa, Gönül Öney and Semavi Eyice, trained the following generations of art historians, therefore linking the development of the discipline in Turkey with Vienna School permanently.