From Praise to Condemnation: Ottoman Revivalism and the Production of Space in Early Republican Ankara

Date

2015-07-01

Author

Basa, İnci

Metadata

Show full item record

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

Item Usage Stats

252
views

0
downloads

This article observes how architectural practice and symbolic appropriations interconnectedly produced space in 1920s' Ankara, the new capital of the new Republic of Turkey. The once magnificent and powerful Istanbul, capital of the Ottoman Empire, had its centuries long authority removed to disassociate the country from corporeal memories of its Ottoman past. The old capital was associated both with imperial and Islamic characteristics, and the republicans aimed to build a capital that spatially represented modernity. Interestingly, however, they employed Ottoman Revivalism, the architectural style in vogue at the time, to embody the political power of the new republic. This article emphasizes the contradiction between the retrospective politics of Ottoman Revivalism and the modernist vision of the republicans. It explores the sudden collapse of the revivalist approach by tracing the trajectory of modernist discourse as it was influenced by the political dynamics of the time.

Subject Keywords

Capital city, Ottoman revivalist architecture, Representation, Production of space, Early republican Ankara

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/42224

Journal

JOURNAL OF URBAN HISTORY

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1177/0096144214566957

Collections

Department of Architecture, Article

Suggestions

OpenMETU
Core

The Residential architecture of ankara during the 1920s: the housing types in the settlement zones of the new capital city Avcı Hosanlı, Deniz; Altan, Tomris Elvan (2018-12-01) The focus of this paper is the residential architecture of the capital city Ankara during the 1920s, which is investigated as part of the development of the city after the foundation of the Turkish Republic. It initially defines the main settlement zones of contemporary Ankara that transformed and were formed in relation with the contemporary development plans implemented to direct the urban growth. The construction of new single houses and apartments as the main housing types of the period in the defined s...
Ankara “Yeni Şehir”in Kuruluşu: “Erken Cumhuriyet Konutu”nu Anlamak Cengizkan, Ali (ODTÜ Mimarlık Fakültesi, 2022-6) Bir Şehir Kurmak: Ankara 1923-1933 sergi ve kitap çalışması, erken Cumhuriyet mimarlığı üzerine, özellikle de Ankara ve dönemin mimarisi konusunda çok farklı yönlerden açılımlar getirdi. Dönemin yeni Ankara’sı olan Yeni Şehir’in fotoğraflarla temellendirilerek modellenmesi, bu sırada 1300’e yakın çok özgün sayıda fotoğraf, hava fotoğrafı ve sınırlı da olsa döneme ilişkin mimari proje çizimlerinden yararlanılması, özelde Ankara’daki 350 yapılık Yeni Şehir bölgesine, genelde bütün Türkiye’de söz konusu 1923-1...
FROM PUBLIC MONUMENT TO PUBLIC SQUARE: CHANGING MEANING AND CONSERVATION OF SULTANAHMET SQUARE FROM LATE ROMAN THROUGH TO MODERN TIMES Doğan Parlak, Sena; Serin, Ufuk; Department of Architecture (2021-5) This study aims to investigate the process of the fragmentation of the Late Roman Hippodrome of Constantinople, and its transformation from a public monument into a public square from the Byzantine period through to Ottoman and modern times. This research also focuses on the conservation of this monument, starting with the Late Roman legal regulations concerning the conservation of urban public buildings and their architectural reuse. In addition to structural damage and alterations caused by both natural f...
The Role of the Train Station in the Image Formation of the Early Republican Ankara Sak, Segah; Basa, İnci (2012-07-01) Depending on the assumption that buildings play the fundamental role in the formation of cities and their image, this study investigates the contribution of the Train Station to the formation of Ankara and its image in the early years of the Turkish Republic. The spatial entity of the station reflected the intended modern identity of the new state. Orienting the movement and development within its setting, the building constituted an indispensable element of the structure of the city. It acted as an immedia...
Displaying abroad: Architecture and town planning exhibitions of Britain in Turkey in the mid-1940s Altan, Tomris Elvan (2014-03-01) This paper focuses on two exhibitions of architecture and town planning held by Britain in Turkey in the mid-1940s. The use of these exhibitions for propaganda purposes, as well as their reception in the highly politicized context of World War II, requires the study to emphasize the political as well as the professional perspective of the contemporary architectural context. Analyzing why and how these exhibitions were held, and what they displayed as representative of British architecture and town planning,...

Citation Formats

İ. Basa, “From Praise to Condemnation: Ottoman Revivalism and the Production of Space in Early Republican Ankara,” JOURNAL OF URBAN HISTORY, pp. 711–738, 2015, Accessed: 00, 2020. [Online]. Available: https://hdl.handle.net/11511/42224.