The Silent Collapse of Cultural Heritage: A Day in Bodrum

I went to Bodrum Castle. I wanted to find out how long a stone on which I had written an article would remain on display. Inside the castle, there was a poster stating that the exhibition titled “Inflation and Purchasing Power in Antiquity” would end on December 21, 2026. Therefore, my question was simple but important: Was this stone part of the exhibition, and would it be removed along with it?

The search for an answer revealed a situation far more striking than the question itself.

The staff at the ticket desk directed me to a security guard. If, in a museum, there is no structure that can answer a visitor’s question or at least direct them to the right person, then what is displayed there is not knowledge, but merely objects.

The response given by the security guard revealed the institutional vacuum in a single sentence: “Nothing that comes here ever gets removed, so no need to worry.”

This was not an answer. It was an expression of a mindset.

My question was not an ordinary one. As someone who has worked on Diocletian’s Edict on Maximum Prices, I was trying to understand the historical context of the stone in front of me and its relation to the exhibition. This was not superficial curiosity, but a question directly related to historical and economic analysis. Yet, it found no institutional response.

What I asked was not complicated either. I simply wanted to clarify whether the stone was part of the exhibition and how long it would remain on display. But I could not access even this most basic information. The problem was not the lack of knowledge of the individuals present. It was the absence of institutional mechanisms to produce, store, and transmit knowledge.

Even more disturbing was the physical placement of the stone. A stone representing a text of major importance in world history stood almost in the open, unprotected. If a visitor were to lose balance, it could easily be damaged. This is not merely negligence. It is irresponsibility toward cultural heritage.

And the problem does not end here.

My disappointment deepened at the site of the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus. You enter a place that once hosted one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Yet there is no strong or compelling narrative to convey this. There is no emphasis at the entrance, no guidance inside, no structure that draws the visitor in.

There is a video inside. But the setting is makeshift. It neither matches the gravity of the site nor carries the seriousness needed to bring the visitor closer to knowledge. You walk through an open-air museum, yet you leave without fully understanding what you have seen.

You want to buy a book to access information. What you encounter instead is a randomly placed sales point that does not explain the museum.

There is no knowledge. No guidance. No memory.

This picture is not the sum of isolated mistakes. It is the result of an institutional void.

The problem is not the inadequacy of the people working there. The problem is the structure that leaves them uninformed, unguided, and unaccountable.

Cultural heritage cannot be preserved merely by protecting stones. It must be interpreted, narrated, and placed within a context. When this is not done, what remains is nothing more than a meaningless remnant.

No one should ask why the Pergamon Altar is in Berlin, why Ephesus is in Vienna, or why Halicarnassus is in London.

The issue is not where the past is. The issue is how we treat the past today.