An assessment of the conservation issues of tangible and intangible cultural herıtage in UNESCO endangered world heritage sites

The World Heritage Convention, acknowledged at the UNESCO General Conference in 1972, universalized the concept of world heritage and the necessity of preserving cultural heritage that each country should not only conserve the World Heritage Sites on its territory, but also conserve its national heritage. Moreover, the necessity of conserving and maintaining the World Heritage Sites, which have been demolished over time due to various reasons, the necessity of conserving, increasing, and disseminating information that the damage will affect the whole world, has also been addressed within the scope of this Convention. Article 11 of the Convention states that UNESCO will organize, update, and publish a list of world heritage sites endangered in the face of various risks under the heading "List of World Heritage in Danger (LOWHID)". In this context, it has been decided to include the heritage area in LOWHID if there is a potential, serious or specifically threatening risk factor and if important practices are required for its conservation. The List of World Heritage in Danger includes the fact that the assets that make up the cultural and natural heritage are affected by various disasters and earthquakes, fires, landslides, changes in water level, volcanic eruptions, natural hazards such as floods and tidal waves, as well as rapid and distorted urbanization, intensive tourism burden, destruction caused by changes in the misuse and ownership of land, abandonment of a cultural asset for any reason; areas threatened by human-induced risks and hazards, such as the outbreak of an armed conflict or the possible threat of conflict. There were 55 sites, 16 of which were natural and 39 of which were cultural on the List of World Heritage in Danger. The UNESCO World Heritage Committee has created a database of the State of Conservation System, which includes comprehensive analysis and reporting to identify the development and potential trends in the state of conservation of heritage sites over time from 1979 to the present. The database is an important resource for understanding the risks to which DMAs have been exposed over the last century. In numerous State of Conservation Reports, UNESCO has identified that heritage sites are exposed to various natural and man-made risks. In the implementation guidelines published because of these reports, UNESCO has identified the risk factors on these sites. In this study, which deals with the factors that cause cultural heritage values to be endangered under two main headings as natural and human-induced, the reasons for the danger of World Heritage Sites are examined under the headings of risk factors. As a result of these assessments, the effects on tangible and intangible heritage values in cultural heritage sites have been revealed. The conservation issues scaused directly or indirectly by these impacts on heritage sites have been revealed and the conservation issues in these sites have been assessed in the last part of the thesis.