- Local / Regional Integration and Cultural Heritage    272 kb by    Çelikhan, Seniha & Eryýlmaz, Semiha Sultan | semihaeryilmaz@yahoo.com    Short Outline This paper provides an overall view on the culture, cultural heritage and historical identity, revealing and analyzing the military fronts at West Anatolia of Turkey as a cultural heritage in order to revitalize the historical identity. Abstract Culture is a fact that distinguishes a society from others by inserting an identity into a society, while identity could be defined as a factor providing an integration of a global society without losing its fundamental values. Historical and cultural value accumulation of a society could be explained as the cultural heritage. The concept of identity gains importance along with protection of a culture and cultural heritage in a city or region. Depending on the human, capital and information mobilization as developed by the globalization process, the consumption habits, lifestyles and the environments of people resemble each other very much and the cities claiming their identities in this process are distinguished with their differences in the national and international scale. So , some cities outstand by patronizing identity and cultural heritage Parallel to this, the tourist movements also meaning the travel and temporary accommodation activities realized for the purpose of business, entertainment, resting, sporting etc., gain a different dimension in accordance with the culture, cultural heritage and local identity. For the purpose of knowing different cultures, seeing the historical heritage, establishing an inter-cultural communication international tourist movements are activated whereby a social integration is provided. Considering that tourists always direct aim towards the regions who claim their own identities under the facts of culture and cultural heritage, it is very explicit that urban structuring which integrates itself with the historical identity would be used as a means for socio-economic regional integration. In this study, for the sake of using the cultural heritage as a means in the regional integration and development, it shall be displayed the inventory for military fronts and trenches which were formed in the Turkish War of Independence, specify their locations and their arrangement in line with the historical function / identity and opening for tourism. In this scope, the environmental and landscaping values of the military fronts at West Anatolia as a cultural heritage will be revealed, transforming such fronts into open air museums, providing their sustainability with the public attendance and making use of the cultural tourism in the national / international scale will be recommended. Keywords Cultural heritage, historical identity, participation of the public, regional integration Case Study presented on the ISOCARP Congress 2006: Cities between Integration and Disintegration   Click to open the full paper as pdf document   Click to send an email to the author(s) of this paper