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Paper long abstract

Polonezköy (Adampol), a village on Istanbul's outskirts, was founded in the 19th century as a refuge for Polish émigrés. This research examines how its material remnants—especially the cemetery, memorials, and Polish heritage—serve as markers of decay and renewal in a postimperial context. Through ethnographic fieldwork and archival research, the paper explores how these remnants reflect tensions between memory, identity, and political power shaped by imperial legacies.

The Polonezköy cemetery, with its inscriptions and Polish-Armenian-Turkish intermarriages, serves as a material archive of historical integration and ongoing social transformations. The demographic decline of ethnic Polish residents, alongside internal migration from central and eastern Turkey, has reshaped the village’s social fabric and political power structures. This shift is symbolized by the material decay of heritage sites, which simultaneously act as spaces of resistance, where new solidarities emerge in the face of political and demographic change.

The cemetery and remnants of the village’s Polish past illustrate the tension between memory and erasure—signifying both loss and potential. These ruins, while representing fading relevance for newer generations, also provide spaces for new narratives of belonging and identity to emerge. The paper argues that the ruins of Polonezköy offer a unique lens to reflect on the postimperial afterlife of heritage. By focusing on materiality, temporality, and political transformation, the research emphasizes how ruins act as contested sites of memory, offering insights into erasure, continuity, and the reimagining of heritage in a fragmented world.