A research on vandalism and its causes

Vandalism is a common problem worldwide; besides it is an important concept which has been subject to many researches in terms of its psychological, sociological and economic dimensions. It is seen that the researches on this subject around the world started earlier than our country and expanded to examine the cases of Vandalism in different disciplines. In Turkey studies on Vandalism are seen that they are focused mostly on attacks targeting public spaces such as parks and gardens, public furniture, public goods, schools and rarely public sculptures in public spaces; that is, on landscape architecture. On the other hand, it is understood that violence against historical artifacts and artworks is not emphasized enough. Besides it is not paid enough attention to this matter, it is obvious that the works of art in our country which are being exhibited whether in public spaces or in a museum or exhibition are under threat of Vandalism. However, on the occasion of limitation of the study; due to reasons such as the meaning and the scope of the Vandalism concept and the need to address dynamics that trigger Vandalist actions in Turkey within our own cultural system; on the grounds that it would be more appropriate to consider the issue in another study, cases of Vandalism in Turkey were not included in the study. This thesis aims to draw attention to the dimensions of this violence by investigating and classifying the causes of vandalism towards art works, including the examples of Vandalism dating back to the present day and early examples from the world. Considering the prevalence and excess of Vandalist attacks in many geographies and cultures around the world, the thesis tries to address relatively more important works or more sensational cases. In the study, considering the parallelism of the concept of vandalism with the concept of iconoclasm, the subject has been dealt with in the common denominator. In resource research; books, articles, periodicals, theses, dictionaries and web sites were searched using data collection management.