But again this just my personal impression from visiting the area and maybe there are budgetary reasons instead of religious chauvinism.
Istanbul still sees decent construction activity both downtown (where old buildings are torn down and replaced with taller ones) and in the suburbs (the city got so big that we inadvertently say "I'm going to Istanbul" when we really mean the city centre).
So in theory, as the construction teams dig not only a wider area but also deeper, they should discover more and more historical artifacts, right?..
In Turkey, law says you can own the land but not any natural resources found underneath. So if word gets out that you've stumbled upon oil, stuff of archeological importance, gold etc. etc. while digging to lay foundations, your construction project is halted until the authorities decide what to do with your discovery. You may even be forced to sell your property back for its fair market value (ie. you get a decent offer but you can't refuse it -- you can just sue to get the offer increased)
You probably see where this is going: The sytem as it is incentivizes any artifacts found during private construction activities to just vaporize. Tragic, but I don't know what could be done about this. Only stuff found on state-sponsored projects seem to see the light of day, and of those that do, only ones that are useful to politicians are made part of the daily government propaganda, so you don't really hear about others unless you make an effort.
With this said, as a counterpoint maybe, they found a decent amount of stuff from non-Turkish / non-islamic periods during the recent boring operations for the newest subway line and they should be on display somewhere.
The first is the mentality of "conquest" that a part of the population (and the ruling party) share. Those people don't see byzantine-era artifacts as part of their history (unless it is a church converted to mosque). Many part of the ancient city have been left to rot and only with the latest (opposition-linked) administration some restoration work has started.
The second reason is corruption: big construction companies own a good amount of the turkish media and state sponsored projects are one way for the ruling party to thanks them for a pro-government information landscape. As such the state has little interest in blocking a construction project because some artefacts were found. As a bonus, whatever is found can be sold to smugglers
https://www.culture.gouv.fr/Regions/Drac-Grand-Est/patrimoin...
Then of course there is general attitude of the local population towards common goods like archeology and enforcement policies (or lack thereof).
As to Istanbul - the City has stood there for two and a half thousand years. If you dig under the Byzantine ruins, you'll find even more ancient ruins, thousands of years of layers of ancient ruins, one on top of the other like a mille-feuille. Who's going to excavate all that? Especially when there's, you know, people living on top.
And the same goes for all the large cities that have been inhabited since antiquity all around the world. Think Cairo, Alexandria, Rome, Naples, Plovdiv, Vukovar, Belgrade, Valencia, Damascus, Baghdad, Beijing, Nanjing, Kashgar, Delhi... phew. Here's more:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_continuously_in...
So it's got nothing to do with "Osmanic heritage" or nationalism. It's just not a problem that can easily be solved.
> Istanbul's Byzantine basement surfeit survives in part thanks to a 1980s cultural heritage code that allows people who find something ancient on their property to keep it, without worrying that the government will seize it.
> "Thanks to this new law, a lot of historical things were protected by the locals in Istanbul," Ozgumus says. "Before, they were destroying it."
But many of the sites are not Ottoman in origin, and are quite central to the cities archeological portfolio. On the other hand, artifacts (like the ships they discovered during tunnel excavations) are also on display. They are just several layers under the Ottoman Istanbul so when you find them, it's not going to be a whole site you can visit.
Another hint might be that if you go outside of Istanbul, there are a lot of Greek era sites (or even earlier sites) that are "the" highlight of the adjacent region or city. Assos, Ephesus, Troy, many things in Bodrum, Cappadocia and many more. Here, the problem is clearly money. Take Assos. They do what they can, and it's fully excavated. There just don't seem to be the resources to feature it in a more exciting fashion.
Finally, knowing people who are Turkish archeologists, I would say they care about the entire history of the place just as any other archeologist would.
In any case, I also hope there will be (and it seems at times that there is) more resources to excavate, understand and display all the historical sites found in Turkey.
To be clear, I am not Turkish, but I go there often.
I completely agree. I wish there was an international scientific funding body like the NSF. It could, for instance, provide grants to fund regional archaeology. Life is not easy for scientists in countries that don't fund it. It could be such a good thing for the world.
Something I've wondered about art and traditions that predate Islam, is how many of those spiritual and material traditions were appropriated or assimilated into Islam and have survived for centuries by becoming mainstream. e.g. Christmas - the tree, the 3 days of the solstice relating to the resurrection, it was a long time before it became common knowledge that those "Christian" traditions pre-date Christ, right? So what ancient history is staring us in the face because we've been calling it Islamic all this time?
I’m not sure that this is an Islamic trait so much as a victor/oppressor behaviour.
You see this in buildings throughout history, where the dominant power converts existing structures to their usage, or destroys things they don’t want. It’s how rulers seek to dominate.
One way to approach the topic might be to watch "The Gift" on Netflix and realize that the book was written by a woman who practices (quite successfully, too) these Shamanic ideas. Then, the context would be that these sorts of stories and myths are extremely popular in Turkey (which is why the book was a hit) and that they live - in an uneasy, unspoken relationship - side by side with Islamic teachings that are culturally from a very different origin. Another option is to look at Sufism and its capricious relationship with official, state sponsored Islam. Many Turks I know like to view themselves as heavily inspired by Sufism.
Not sure if I am qualified to explicate on traditions in detail, but my feeling is your intuition holds quite true, at least in Turkey. Many little things, from reading coffee, to marriage rituals, to protection against "evil eyes" and spirits, personification of devils and angels, things that are bad luck and generally most "Islamic" things that you find are unique to Turkey compared to Arab countries - are probably things that predate Islam.
If they didn't want this heritage, they'd have already got rid of it through destruction (see Syria/Iraq); but my guess is that there isn't enough money to take care of it.