Dini bir mekanın devlet müzesine dönüştürülme sürecinin Mevlana Müzesi üzerinden anlatımı

Museums are acknowledged to be very effective tools in rendering a certain ideology from the beginning of their emergence as a concept. When it is about museums with strong religious associations or which were converted from religious sites, however, the situation becomes even more intricate. Turkey in that respect provides the researcher with invaluable opportunities since it houses several examples which are specific to this country in the sense that they represent a precise junction of museums, religion and politics. Mevlana Museum in Konya is one powerful example of such sites: it is a museum, it has strong religious connotations and it is a potent means of political image making. It is intriguing, thus, to evaluate the case of the Mevlana Museum and the changes applied to its image, in order to reflect the ways in which the political potential of museums has been realized in a state museum which was once a sacred site. Hence, the foremost aim of this thesis is to analyze the ways in which the positioning of religion within the Mevlana Museum has been serving in the production of ideologies with an emphasis on the changes that the museum has been undergoing during the last decade. In doing so, the study primarily draws upon the media sources and in-situ observations.