Cultural Services In Municipalities As A Tool For Creating Urban Culture: The Case Of Selçuklu

Local governments as being responsible for physical, socio-economical and cultural developments of cities and communities have the utmost potential to affect daily lives of the local people. Policy making organs of local governments usually focus on the steps taken by these institutions and the behaviours and activities of individuals due mainly to ‘generate’ common culture, city and urban culture or identity of the respective actors through reviewing service provision conditions for the local. This is a necessity. Hence organisations are supposed to be aware that they are affected by outside conditions as well as reflecting the community they live in and the conditions surround. The changing perceptions of municipalities from local and common service providing organisations to social and culturally active and assigned units direct them to be beneficial not only to local necessities and responsibilities but also to cultivate urban culture and urban awareness to ‘mix and mingle’ urban identity. Cultural activities of municipalities and resultant urban culture and identity would play important role of unification and complementary undertakings for this goal. As the major units of local governments, municipalities strive to meet the daily needs of the inhabitants through the usual activities of urban life. When the city pays attention to respect the values and customs of urban culture, they are able to protect and preserve unique urban conditions in order to uphold urban awareness and this may lead to affiliate with the ‘city’, and become fellow city dwellers. In addition, ‘ordinary’ inhabitants become the city settlers with identical cultural features. People from socially, culturally and economically different segments of the society would be united with certain harmonised and meaningful acquaintances in a specific urban environment. This is more evident especially in newly formed cities and urban communities as long as they create intentional policies and projects to engender urban culture and city awareness around certain ideas, symbols and values. The municipalities which design cultural policies with certain degree of awareness and consciousness would be fortunate to activate the urban community might deploy physical and financial resources in meeting the demands and expectations of the respective people. Cities may mean more than physical structure and land use, because they own daily life activities and relations, ideas, political preferences, social relations and interactions, which are distinctive in a given time period, and human elements. Architectural design, aesthetic significances and local physical and concrete values shape the expectations and specifications in urban culture. Common use of the same land pieces does not necessarily lead to the same perceptions and meanings among different human groups. On the contrary, as parallel to the Rumi’s famous verse ‘people who speak the same language cannot communicate, but the ones who have the same feelings can do’, living in the same city is not enough to have common values. Human beings should have an identity which is relevant for the entire local community. The place and its history is a centre piece of building element of urban identity and city culture. For this reason, it might be wise to search and to evaluate the city and urban history in order to find common historical elements rather than creating an artificial and ‘designed’ motto to ‘unite’, ‘integrate’ and ‘shape’ the individuals for the cost of the community. This may be deemed as ‘brainwash’ or ‘social engineering’ for some observers. Cities could produce effective solutions to social, cultural and physical problems of the communities in line with traditional values and experiences. As one of the youngest and the largest districts of Konya province, Selçuklu Municipality, formed in 1989, owns the name of prestigious Selçuklu brand with enormous historical inheritance, claims to carry out intentional activities to polish the ‘Selçuklu awareness’ among its inhabitants. This paper intends to highlight the lessons and values created through cultural activities during 2009 – 2012 period, and the prospect for applying them to other local authorities in their similar activities. The municipality underlines history by performing scientific, popular and traditional activities and projects, restorations and archaeological excavations, symposiums and numerous publications for the sake of creating awareness and identity among the inhabitants. This paper aims to evaluate the case to find out the positive and negative dimensions. In fact, social, cultural and economical preconditions are relevant at Selçuklu in examining the case. The inhabitants of Selçuklu may be the most cosmopolitan among the districts of Konya. Intensive young university population, recent rapid urban developments and sites and land use attracting middle class and working families pose a rich atmosphere at Selçuklu, as being sociologically and administratively attractive to search and evaluate. It is vital for the policy makers at the municipality to bring together around common ‘Selçuklu awareness’ factor the people from diverse social backgrounds with different life style preferences. One needs to take into account the cultural and economical resources. With its rich historical experience as being a shelter for beliefs and religions such as Christianity and Islam, Selçuklu may choose to be a ground for cultural pluralism by encouraging inclusiveness and acceptances vis-à-vis the ‘others’. Besides, economical conditions are also convenient. Economically central position of the district in Konya, and being the home for Organized Industrial Estates and successful entrepreneurs, Selçuklu municipality has one of the strongest financial and economical powers in the region with the pioneering and encouraging human factors and other resources. In this regard, Konya is one of the luckiest among other municipalities. The officials of Selçuklu assert that the cultural activities are planned to enrich common urban culture. Although there is no concrete evidence that these activities are appropriate for action, we need to rely on the views by the municipality. This paper wishes to evaluate the case according to the opinions uttered by officials. ‘Outside’ and especially the ‘subjects’ of the policies would have been examined. However, this paper takes the official views and digs into the ‘unseen’, and ‘unspoken’ components. So, the idea behind the policies and the goals to reach involve public policy actors and primary stakeholders. Urban culture and urban awareness establishing activities are directed to unite the inhabitants and to attract attentions to the city. In this regard, even the initiation by the officials in this end is enough to reveal the prospect. The lack of evidence about the intentions of the actors does not mean that they are not exist. The cultural policies of Selçuklu municipality indicate that the authority pays ultimate devotion. The study documents the policies and applications of the municipality to construct responsive results applying public policy approach.