Justification of Outstanding Universal Value
The intricate urban texture of Kemaliye creates a cultural and natural landscape that forms a whole. The nature-space-human relationship here has created a unique texture of settlement. The part of the Karanlık (Dark) Canyon that includes the Keban Dam Lake, which is an integral part of the Kemaliye settlement, is 8 kilometers, and its entire length is approximately 35 kilometers. The elevation difference between the river base and the valley side in the canyon reaches up to 1000 meters.
With this feature, Dark Canyon is among the top five deep canyons in the world. Natural elements are of great importance in the formation of Kemaliye’s unique urban texture and architectural character. The sloping structure of the region, the presence of the Euphrates River, other water resources in the settlement center and the climate features are the natural factors that determine the position and formation of the civil architecture examples in Kemaliye. The way of life here is based on nature.
The building conditions of Kemaliye which is positioned over the 30-45% slope of a terrain have brought about the construction of houses with two or more than two storeys. The designs of these houses have solutions that used the topographic data with a rational approach. In this respect, they must be appreciated as a product of a human creative genius. The terrain conditions have brought about two street types, namely in parallel with slope and vertical. When the seating situation of Kemaliye houses in the topography is examined, it is seen that it is possible to access houses from two, sometimes three different levels. The relationship between the house and the street can be provided from three different levels: courtyard, garden and direct house connection.
The fundamental principle applied to position the houses and project the indoor space is the tendency to orient towards the Euphrates. The main spaces and rooms of the houses are positioned in a way to see the scenery of the Euphrates while they come to the forefront with their bay windows and become special. In this sense, the Euphrates has influenced the design of urban space and architecture. The settlements have been designed and established in accordance with this impact.
Besides the natural flow of water springing from this source, an irrigation network is set up through the network of water-ducts. Thanks to this irrigation network which is one of the examples of human creative genius, the water gets to the gardens of houses, courts or fountains or the cooling chambers inside the houses. The water channels also ensure a natural air-conditioning while its water flows along the walls of gardens throughout the street before entering the houses.
There are many original urban details of Kemaliye Houses. The stone-staired street systems shaped in accordance with the topography, the tortas, the intersections of houses with the street corners, water-ducts, the garden walls integrated with the greenery, the grapevine structures, the fountains with iwan, the simple urban furniture and such are worth studying in terms of their local peculiarities. In addition to the characteristic street types of Kemaliye developed in accordance with the topography, there is a third street type defining the urban character. These streets, locally called “torta”, have the feature of a passageway. These passageways are formed while the houses are erected over the street. The tortas can be seen in the streets extending vertically against or in parallel with the slope.
The concerns to ease the exit points on these staired-streets which occasionally become narrow and develop vertically towards the slope are felt. The bevelling method is frequently used in order to decrease the sharpness of the street turns adjacent to the corner walls of the house placed into the street. These special details in which a corbelled system is used play a definitive role in the character of the street.
Besides the original urban details, there are many unique details about the residential architecture in Kemaliye houses. Traces of social life can be seen in almost all Kemaliye houses. The figures, which have a place in people’s lives and have certain meanings, have been stylized and turned into details that enrich the simple structures of the houses. Figures on door knockers and locks, wooden carvings on fixed hardware, «rıhtım» floor pavements done with small river stones, inscriptions and stone reliefs on facades, skylights, patterns on large V-shaped iron pins connecting wooden pieces called “güllap” and door knockers that differ from their traditional typology are the details that contain these traces. For example, the stylized snake figures on the keyholes on the doors of the rooms or on the hangers nailed on the wooden belts that circulate throughout some rooms carry the belief that the snake will protect the house from evil from the past to the present.
The figure in the rings to which the ropes connected to the baby cradles, which are suspended in the air in Kemaliye houses are thought to belong to Mother Umay, the protector. Mother Umay figure is the general name given to feminine beings seen in Turkish mythology. In the inscriptions of Köl Tigin, Bilge Kağan and Tonyukuk, Mother Umay is referred to as a woman deity. In the authentic architecture of the houses, all the service spaces, walking spaces, lower terraces of the rooms, roofs and courts are covered by the “rıhtım” floor system in which the small creek stones are paved side by side.
Criterion (v): Town of Kemaliye has a cultural and natural landscape bearing testimony to 600 years of Ottoman / Anatolian urbanism and architectural texture. This landscape is composed by these components: Settlement fabric and streets which were shaped in accordance with the topographic structure of Karasu Valley; building masses and facades, which are directed to the Euphrates River; use of stone as local construction material; use and transportation of wood as non local material to the area by a very special method called Apart; spatial organisations of the houses (in terms of both interior and outside organisations) which were shaped in harmony with nature and topography. Due to these features; it can be said that Kemaliye is one of the true representatives of the housing culture developed in Anatolia (Doğan Kuban, Problems of Our Art History, Çağdaş Publications, Istanbul, 1975).
Criterion (viii): Being one of the largest canyons in the world and completing its geological formation over the centuries, Karanlik Canyon has an exceptional importance both with its geological structure and its “Taş Yol/Stone Road” built by carving out of hard rocks. The chain of events that shaped the geological features of Kemaliye and its surroundings started with the formation of the Neotethys Ocean, which covered the region in the Late Triassic. Thereafter, neritic conditions prevailed in which continuous carbonate precipitation took place until the Late Cretaceous. Since the Late Cretaceous, the region has been compressed, uplifted and the oceanic lithosphere that forms the bottom of the Neotethys Ocean has settled on the continent with the events that caused the closure of this ocean (thrust and ophiolite settlement). During the Tertiary period, the region was mostly affected by compression and uplifts movements and at the end of the early Miocene marine conditions completely disappeared. Today, the marine units in the region have a rich and characteristic fossil content of different groups and times. (Such as Paleodacyclades, Megalodontidae, Foraminifera, Rudists, echinites, Bivalves, gastropods, corals). Tectonic events developed in the post-Miocene period controlled the outflow of steep-sloped deep valleys, well-developed karstification structures and water resources in the region.
