Mezarlarda Aidiyet ve Kentlileşme Sorunu

It is an important urbanization problem for the people living in cities to benefit as much as possible from the opportunities of the town and to be integrated with that city. It has been known that there is a high correlation between the duration of residence and urbanisation in towns. To one aspect, this can be considered as both membership to an urban city and adopting that city. The scope of urbanisation process and its extent, seems to be more comprehensive and profound than it has been expected. The context of this process is not only restricted to the current environment of the individuals, but it also continued in the cemeteries, where the lives ended. Social and individual differenciation in life, sense of belonging to kinship, family and homeland and feelings towards the dead one, the things which could not be achieved during life-time, all can be easily observed in the cemeteries. These feelings are best expressed on epitaphs. In this regard, this study investigates the problems of belonging and urbanisation. After detecting the existence of belonging and urbanisation problems, in order to understand the problem from all aspects, observations have been made in various cemeteries in Istanbul. Eventually, Uskiidar 9akaldag Cemetery was identified as focus point, taking into consideration the relatively close distance of this cemetery to to city centrum and its feature of having an urbanisation period which is neither too old nor too recent. Besides, systematic observations were made at Uskudar Karacaahmet and Kartal Yakaclk cemeteries because of their special featuresJor comparison with the results of current study. As known, approximately two third of the residents of istanbul do not consider themselves belonging to istanbul. Reflections of this consideration to the tombstones as an urbanisation problem was investigated in this study.