FROM HIPPODROME TO MİLLET BAHÇESİ: A SOCIOSPATIAL HISTORY OF PUBLIC SPHERE IN ANKARA, 1930-2021

Date

2023-5-27

Author

Ülke, Aysema

Metadata

Show full item record

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Item Usage Stats

164
views

132
downloads

Cite This

The public sphere notion implies an egalitarian ground in social and political terms for every individual who partakes and produces it to freely express and exchange their ideas. In an urban environment, in return, a public space defines a ground for people to access equal opportunities as well as goods and services even in their everyday life patterns, which could create a democratic public domain in the end. However, the instruments of the current mode of production further provoke mechanisms-in-power to deterritorialize and then reterritorialize the said space, on which the ideologies dispose via property relations of capitalism. Therefore, counter to its ideal nature, the public sphere becomes a question regarding specific problems such as social segregation and fragmentation disposition. In respect to the faculties of critical urban geography, the said problem with its global and local multi-layered complexities needs a critical reading of the contemporary notion of the public sphere. In tune with that, thesis studies Atatürk Kültür Merkezi Areas in Ankara in a historical context, from the era of Hippodrome to its current urban program, Başkent Millet Bahçesi. From the standpoint of monopoly rent, its multi-dimensional timeline presents successive territorialization processes of overlapping ideologies through three turning points: Hippodrome as the place of sports and national celebrations, AKM as a gift to the nation on behalf of the founding father of the Republic, and finally, the largest Millet Bahçesi by conservative urban policies. The thesis, in this respect, intends to understand the said ideologies with the hope of providing an intellectual ground for further possibilities of reading the sociospatial qualities of the public sphere in Ankara’s urban history.

Subject Keywords

Public Sphere, Territorialization, Hippodrome, Atatürk Kültür Merkezi, Millet Bahçesi

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/103688

Collections

Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences, Thesis