Exercising Our Rights to Past: Emergent Heritage Activism in Istanbul

This chapter defines new modalities of resistance in relation to heritage and aims to elaborate heritage activism as a part of exercising the right to the city and appropriation, through emergent activist urban practices. Heritage activism is understood as various acts of civil disobedience that leverage heritage and collective—alternative—past narratives. As a means to discuss the notion of heritage activism and right to the city, the chapter brings various acts, potentials, and issues with heritage activism through an intangible heritage case of a historical edible plant garden from Istanbul-Turkey. Heritage, beyond the authorized heritage discourse, is a plural, shared set of values and meanings that are attributed to tangible and intangible heritage. Collective memory and history connect us to a vast world of shared values and struggles that form our common ground and, more importantly, give value, meaning, and power to today’s political practice.