Urbanism, Modernity, and Nation-Building in Ankara: The Birth of Turkey’s Capital City during the Early Republican Period
Publication: Journal of Urban Planning and Development
Volume 148, Issue 2
Abstract
Following the proclamation of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, one of the most important urban planning and architectural projects of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s national program was the establishment and development of a new capital city called Ankara. During these formative years, Ankara underwent a major program of architectural urbanism and modernism that visually set the young republic apart from its recent Ottoman past. This paper will attempt to examine historical precedents in capital city planning via a cross-country analysis to that of Ankara; however, it will also highlight the extant literature and contribute to the argument that Ankara provides a unique experience in modernism, urbanism, and especially nation-building in the 20th century. Although Turkey’s political and national direction has taken a new course in the early 21st century, the Kemalist strategy in communicating national identity and nation-building continues to be emulated and communicated in state-sponsored architecture in Ankara.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
Acknowledgments
The author expresses his deepest thanks to Professor Dr. Günsel Renda, whose expertise in the field of Ottoman and Turkish art provided him with a tremendous amount of motivation and inspiration for this paper. Additionally, the author expresses his appreciation to his good friend and colleague, Dr. Mert Gümren, whose genuine interest in his work and valuable suggestions for this paper made this project a worthwhile and meaningful endeavor.
References
Australia Federal Capital Commission, and W. B. Griffin. 1927. Plan of Canberra, the Federal Capital of the Commonwealth of Australia. Map. Canberra, Australia: Federal Capital Commission.
Batuman, B. 2008. “Photography at arms: ‘Early Republican Ankara’ from nation-building to politics of nostalgia.” METU J. Fac. Archit. 25 (2): 99–117.
Çınar, A. 2007. “The imagined community as urban reality: The making of Ankara.” In Urban imaginaries: Locating the modern city, edited by A. Çınar and T. Bender, 151–181. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press.
Deriu, D. 2013. “Picturing modern Ankara: New Turkey in western imagination.” J. Archit. 18 (4): 497–527. https://doi.org/10.1080/13602365.2013.822014.
Ellicott, A. 1792. Plan of the city of Washington in the territory of Columbia: Ceded by the states of Virginia and Maryland to the United States of America, and by them established as the seat of their government after the year MDCCC. Map. Perth, Scotland: s.n.
Evered, K. T. 2008. “Symbolizing a modern Anatolia: Ankara as capital in Turkey’s early republican landscape.” Comp. Stud. South Asia Africa Middle East 28 (2): 326–341. https://doi.org/10.1215/1089201x-2008-009.
Houston, C. 2014. “Ankara, Tehran, Baghdad: Three varieties of Kemalist urbanism.” Thesis Eleven 121 (1): 57–75. https://doi.org/10.1177/0725513614526157.
IGA Istanbul Airport. 2018. “Bir Zafer Anıt: 42 Ayın Hikayesi | A monument of victory: Story of 42 months.” Accessed March 15, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_EXN1GpE0c.
Kacar, D. 2010. “Ankara, a small town, transformed to a nation’s capital.” J. Plann. Hist. 9 (1): 43–65. doi:10.1177/1538513209359869. https://doi.org/10.1177/1538513209359869.
Kezer, Z. 1996. “The making of a nationalist capital: Socio-spatial practices in early Republican Ankara.” Built Environ. 22 (2): 124.
Kezer, Z. 1998. “Contesting urban space in early Republican Ankara.” J. Archit. Educ. 52 (1): 11–19. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1531-314X.1998.tb00251.x.
Kezer, Z. 2000. “Familiar things in strange places: Ankara’s ethnography museum and the legacy of Islam in republican Turkey.” Perspect. Vernacular Archit. 8: 101–116. https://doi.org/10.2307/3514409.
Kezer, Z. 2010. “The making of early Republican Ankara.” Archit. Des. 80 (1): 40–45.
L’Enfant, P. C., Library of Congress, USGS, and US National Geographic Society. 1991. Plan of the city intended for the permanent seat of the government of the United States: Projected agreeable to the direction of the President of the United States, in pursuance of an act of Congress, passed on the sixteenth day of July, MDCCXC, “establishing the permanent seat on the bank of the Potowmac.” Map. Washington, DC: Library of Congress.
Nalbantoğlu, G. B. 1993. “Between civilization and culture: Appropriation of traditional dwelling forms in early republican Turkey.” J. Archit. Educ. 47 (2): 66–74. https://doi.org/10.1080/10464883.1993.10734579.
National Park Service. 1792. The L’Enfant and McMillan plans. Washington, DC: National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior.
Tenenbaum, E. B. 2018. “(De)constructing memory—Architecture’s wunderkind Daniel Libeskind reveals the dreams behind his awe-inspiring creations.” The Glass Magazine. https://www.theglassmagazine.com/daniel-libeskind-profile/.
TRT World Now. 2018. “Turkey’s president Erdogan opens new Istanbul Airport.” Accessed March 15, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BErsP_D6v48.
Turhanoğlu, K., and F. Aysin. 2010. “Spatial production of Ankara as capital city of Republican Turkey.” Int. J. Interdiscip. Social Sci. 5 (5): 309–318. doi:10.18848/1833-1882/CGP/v05i05/51734.
U.S. Congress, House. 1790. “An Act for Establishing the temporary and permanent seat of the government of the United States, 1st Cong., 2nd sess., introduced in House.” Accessed March 24, 2020. https://www.loc.gov/law/help/statutes-at-large/1st-congress/session-2/c1s2ch28.pdf.
Uysal, Z. Ç. 2004. “Architectural interpretations of modernity and cultural identity: A comparative study on Sedad Hakki Eldem And Bruno Taut in Early Republican Turkey.” M.Arch. thesis, Faculty of Architecture, Middle East Technical Univ.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Copyright
© 2022 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Dec 1, 2020
Accepted: May 7, 2021
Published online: Feb 24, 2022
Published in print: Jun 1, 2022
Discussion open until: Jul 24, 2022
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.