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On Location pp 169–191Cite as

Of Forgotten People and Forgotten Places: Nation-Building and the Dismantling of Ankara’s Non-Muslim Landscapes

Abstract

Ankara rose to prominence as the staging ground of the Independence War, waged by Turkish nationalists to liberate the country from post-WWI occupation (1919–1922). In 1923, upon victory, the nationalists proclaimed Ankara as the capital of the new republic they founded. Building a modern capital was central to their efforts to reinvent Turkey as a nation-state, pronouncing a definitive break with the Ottoman past. Ankara, a small central Anatolian provincial seat, provided a suitable location for this purpose, with few Ottoman institutional landmarks and significant population loss due to the forced deportation of the Armenians and nearly as traumatic displacement of the Orthodox Christians. Bereft of its diversity, Ankara was seen as a tabula rasa on which to inscribe the structural transformation of the state.

Contrary to its official depictions, however, Ankara was far from being a tabula rasa: the making of Turkey’s new capital was as much a process of physical and symbolic construction as it was of destruction. While few non-Muslims remained to speak of Ankara’s multicultural history, the remaining landscape invoked their memory. The nationalists considered these artifacts incompatible with the unifying narratives of nationalism they sought to inculcate in the citizenry, and consequently closed, confiscated, or demolished them. These deliberate acts were meant to create a homogeneous landscape by eliminating the sites and practices that belonged to the heterogeneous mosaic of cultures inherited from the Empire. However, the most egregious act of elimination may be the official silence on this matter. This oversight has long afflicted not only architectural history, but Turkish historiography in general, downplaying the overwhelming frictions during this profound transformation and their long-term consequences.

Keywords

  • Local Notable
  • European Union Membership
  • Turkish Government
  • Shopping District
  • Brick Masonry Building

These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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Acknowledgment

I would like to express my thanks to Sibel Zandi-Sayek for her unstinting intellectual support, Dell Upton for his thoughtful feedback, my anonymous informants and Project SAVE of Watertown, MA for their generosity and the British Academy for providing the financial support to undertake the research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Architecture Planning and Landscape, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

    Zeynep Kezer

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  1. Zeynep Kezer
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Correspondence to Zeynep Kezer .

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  1. Dept. Landscape Architecture, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Lorado Taft Drive 611, Champaign, 61820, Illinois, USA

    D. Fairchild Ruggles

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Kezer, Z. (2012). Of Forgotten People and Forgotten Places: Nation-Building and the Dismantling of Ankara’s Non-Muslim Landscapes. In: Ruggles, D. (eds) On Location. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-1108-6_9

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