Spatial Representation of Power: Making the Urban Space of

Transcription

Spatial Representation of Power: Making
the Urban Space of Ankara in the Early
Republican Period
Sinem Türkoğlu Önge
Middle East Technical University
Abstract
The proclamation of the Turkish Republic in 1923 marks the beginning of a new era for
Ankara which was proclaimed capital of the new nation-state. In parallel with the modernization efforts and nation-building strategies of the Republican government, Ankara,
as the new capital, was intended to be constructed as a model city for the whole country.
The aim was the creation of a modern cultural environment with new institutions, sociocultural practices and a new physical townscape. This study argues that making the urban
space of Ankara based on a town planning practice should be seen as part of the Republican modernity project. The priorities of this project were represented by a comprehensive
building programme that resulted in the emergence of diverse public buildings in the
urban space of Ankara from the early years of the Republic. Within this context, this
chapter aims to review the state-sponsored urban planning and architectural practices,
representing the power of the new regime in the capital-making of Ankara, focussing on
the single-party period from 1923 to the end of the 1940s.
Cumhuriyet’in ilan edildiği 29 Ekim 1923 tarihi, Türkiye için aynı zamanda geniş kapsamlı
bir modernite projesinin de başlangıcını sembolize etmektedir. Erken Cumhuriyet dönemi
modernite projesi, yıkılan bir imparatorluğun ardından ulus kimliğinin inşa edilmeye
çalışıldığı, sosyal, kültürel, ekonomik ve politik boyutlarıyla çok yönlü bir modernleşme
sürecini tanımlamaktadır. Bu süreçte, Cumhuriyet rejimi ile birlikte değişen kurumsal
yapı ile değişen sosyal ve kültürel pratiklere paralel olarak, mekânsal stratejilere de büyük
önem verilmiş ve tüm ülke için bir model-kent olması amaçlanan yeni başkent Ankara,
Cumhuriyet’in ilk yıllarından itibaren hızlı bir değişim geçirmiştir. Bu çalışma, erken
Cumhuriyet dönemi Ankarası’nın başkent olarak imarını, cumhuriyetin ilk yıllarından
1940’ların sonuna kadar olan dönemde devlet eliyle yürütülen kentsel planlama
çalışmaları ve kapsamlı yapı programeına odaklanarak incelemektedir.
Ankara’nın ilk planı, Alman C.C.Lörcher tarafından 1924-25 yıllarında hazırlanmış ve
Yenişehir Bölgesi’nin sonraki yıllarda kentsel biçimlenmesini büyük ölçüde belirlemiştir.
Ancak, Lörcher planının, büyüyen kentin ihtiyaçlarını karşılamada yetersiz bulunması
nedeniyle hükümet tarafından 1927 yılında uluslararası bir proje yarışması düzenlemiştir.
Architecture and Power in the Ottoman and Turkish States
72
Yarışmayı kazanan Alman şehirci-mimar H.Jansen’in Ankara kenti imar planı, 1932
yılında resmen uygulamaya konmuştur. Plan, Ankara’nın tarihi kent merkezini, kentin
“geleneksel” merkezi olarak korumuş ve kentin “modern” yüzünü, Yenişehir bölgesi için
getirdiği önerilerle biçimlendirmiştir. Ankara’nın başkent olarak planlanması sürecinin
modernliği, fonksiyonel olarak organize edilmiş düzenli bir kentsel strüktür getirmesinin
yanı sıra, bu yapı içerisinde modern yaşamı destekleyen kentsel mekânlar önermesinden
ileri gelmektedir. 1930’ların sonuna doğru Ankara geniş bulvarları, meydanları,
parkları ve özelleşmiş yönetim, konut, endüstri ve rekreasyon alanları ile modern bir
kent strüktürüne sahip olmuştur. Ancak bu süreç, giderek artan nüfus, paralelinde gelen
düzensiz yerleşim sorunu, yetersiz teknik ve hukuki altyapı, planlama sürecine müdahale
eden farklı aktörlerden kaynaklanan sorunlar gibi nedenlerle başta öngörülenden farklı
gelişmeye başlamıştır. 1939’da Jansen’in sözleşmesinin feshi, Ankara’nın bu “en planlı”
dönemi için bir kırılma noktası olmuştur.
Erken Cumhuriyet dönemi Ankarası’nın Türkiye Cumhuriyeti’nin modern başkenti olarak
planlanması süreci, devlet eliyle yürütülen geniş kapsamlı bir yapı programmeı ile paralel
ilerlemiştir. Bu programmeda öncelik, yeni ulus-devletin ve yeni rejimin erkini sembolize
eden yapılar ile modern bir toplum yaşamını desteklemek üzere inşa edilen yapılara
verilmiştir. Bu yapıların dönemsel olarak incelenmesi 1920’lerin sonundan itibaren
eğitim, sağlık, yönetim ve finans yapıları ile sosyal ve kültürel programmelı yapıların yeni
başkentin kentsel mekânının şekillenmesinde oynadıkları önemli rolü ortaya koymakta
ve yeni rejimin politik, ekonomik ve sosyal modernite projelerindeki öncelikleri hakkında
fikir vermektedir. Kentsel planlama pratikleri sonucu gelişen kentin özellikle Yenişehir
bölgesinde inşa edilen bu yapılar, 1930’ların sonundan itibaren Türkiye’nin başkentinin
çehresini değiştirmiş; dönemin modernist estetik anlayışı ile tasarlanarak yeni rejimin
“asrileştirme” ve “medenileştirme” çabalarının araçları olarak görülmüşlerdir.
Introduction
The opening of the Grand National Assembly in 1920 and then the proclamation of
the Turkish Republic on 29 October 1923 mark the beginning of a new era for Ankara
as the capital city of the young Republic. In parallel with the modernization efforts and
nation-building strategies of the Republican Government, Ankara, as the new capital
in the making, was intended to become a model-city for the country. It was to become
a modern cultural environment with new institutions, socio-cultural practices and a
new physical landscape.
The relocation of the new Republican capital in Ankara symbolized not merely a transition from an Empire to a nation-state, but also marked a new era in Turkey’s modernization attempts. Following the First World War and the National Independence
War, the new Republican government embarked on a modernity project, to ‘construct’
the national identity and to create a modern socio-cultural and physical environment.
Although it was inspired by Western modernity, Turkey’s modernity project should be
interpreted as a multi-sided national endeavour that evolved in parallel with the chang-
Spatial Representation of Power
73
ing social, cultural, economic and political dimensions of the new republican regime1.
This chapter argues that making the urban space of Ankara during the early Republican
period was also a comprehensive spatial modernity project, which was characterized by
the state-sponsored urban planning practices and new building programmes. At that
period, constructing the urban space of Ankara according to the principles of town
planning was actually a modern project that proposed a systematic approach to the
organization of the urban functions of the new capital. The modernity of this project
lies in the expectation that a modern public realm and the ways of a modern urban
life would flourish through the proper organization of public spaces. The government
executed a comprehensive building programme in parallel with the implementation
of urban plans from the late 1920s. In this programme, the priority was given to the
construction of administrative buildings symbolizing the power of the new regime, and
to the educational, financial, social and cultural buildings, which were intended to support the institutional modernization as well as a modern social life.
Focusing on the single party period from 1923 until the end of the 1940s, this chapter aims to explicate the urban planning and architectural practices during Ankara’s
capital-making process. After examining the planning attempts and their results on the
urban fabric of the new capital, the building activities, reflecting the social, cultural,
educational, administrative and economic priorities in the republican multi-sided modernity project, will be studied chronologically.
The
making of a new capital
It is obvious that there is a direct relationship between the building of a new state and
its capital. According to Tankut, the making of a capital should be perceived as a statesponsored political operation2. What is intended while planning a new capital is to
create a symbol for a new political system and to realize different political and social
operations. Besides its political character, a capital should also have a particular physical
image that requires a planned urban development, impressive architectural expression
and a standardized environment. Many scholars writing about the politics of urban
planning argues that planned capitals should be conceived, first of all, as expressions
of the “pride and glory” of nation building3. This is the pride and glory of making the
capital “out of nothing”4 .
To be sure, Ankara was not a city that was created “out of nothing”; on the contrary, it
had been settled since prehistoric times. Inhabited by a multi-cultural society, Ankara
was an important production and commercial town of the Ottoman Empire throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, but lost its economic importance in the following century. Centred around its citadel, Ankara entered into the 20th century as a degraded,
insignificant Anatolian town, which allowed republican administrators to implement
their visions for a modern and contemporary capital.
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Fig. 1
Ankara in the early 20th century.
Source: S. Türkoğlu Önge Archive.
Planning
the urban space: towards a new capital
The declaration of Ankara as the new capital, and then the proclamation of a modern
nation-state governed by a republic in October 1923 marked also the beginning of a
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comprehensive spatial planning project for Ankara. Since it was envisioned by the republican administrators as a model-city for the whole country, planning attempts of
Ankara started as a state-propelled initiative, for which the government was given by
the Grand National Assembly large-scale administrative and fiscal power5. However,
where to begin and how to execute a planning process were major questions that the
republican government faced with in the early 20th century6.
The foundation of Mübadele, İmâr ve İskân Vekâleti [Ministry of Population Exchange,
Development and Settlement] in October 1923 can be accepted as the initial stage for an
institutionalized and planned urbanization process for Republican Turkey. Just after its
foundation, the Ministry prepared a situation report and outlined the general principles
and urgent needs of the city as the reorganization of the municipality, preparation of a
development plan, installation of a sewage system, water system and electricity network,
provision of housing, construction of roads, transportation and financial support7.
As stipulated in the programme, Ankara Şehremaneti [Municipality] was founded by
law in 1924. According to Şehremaneti Law,
The city of Ankara constitutes a Şehremaneti including the vineyards, gardens, fields and pastures inside the limits that will pass through the surrounding hills. This boundary is determined
and the map of the city is prepared by the Municipality. This map becomes valid after its approval by the Ministry of the Interior8.
This was the 1924 Şehremaneti Map, which showed the current situation of Ankara.
Fig. 2
Şehremaneti Map.
Source: Archive of Turkish Grand National Assembly.
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Actually, the initial attempts to prepare a development plan for Ankara started at the
end of 1923. In December 1923, an Istanbul-centred enterprise with German capital,
Keşfiyat ve İnşaat Türk Anonim Şirketi [Société Anonyme Turque d’Études et d’Entreprises
Urbaines], was commissioned to prepare a survey report and a plan for the new capital.
In May 1924, Carl Christoph Lörcher, the German architect working for this enterprise, submitted the first development plan of Ankara with a detailed report to the Municipality9. However, Lörcher’s 1924 plan, comprising only the old part of the town,
was rejected by the municipal commission because of the design ideas that it brought
forward to transform the historical urban fabric10.
In 1925, the Grand National Assembly passed an important law for the expropriation
of 300 hectares of land located on the south of the railway for the future extension of
the city.11 In the same year, Lörcher was asked to prepare a new plan for the 150 hectares of land that had just been expropriated in Yenişehir [new town] area. By this plan,
Lörcher brought new ideas on the urban plot-block organizations, infrastructure, planning of streets and public squares, building heights, etc. This plan was approved by the
Municipal Commission because “the housing crisis dictated that residential construction begin immediately12.” Lörcher’s 1925 plan determined the planning and construc-
Fig. 3
The Lörcher Plan.
Source: Cengizkan, 2004.
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tion of the Yenişehir area to a large extent in the following years13. However, due to the
uncontrolled growth of the city, the plan was found out to be limited in size and scope,
which forced the government towards new measures.
In May 1927, Ankara Şehremaneti sent a technical delegation to Berlin. Under the
guidance of the Turkish Ambassador and the Mayor of Berlin, the Turkish envoys firstly contacted an eminent professor of architecture and planning, Ludwig Hoffmann,
who had prepared the extension plans of Athens, and asked him to prepare the development plan of Ankara. Hoffmann declinted to prepare such a long-term project, but he
recommended Professor Hermann Jansen and Professor Joseph Brix, from the Berliner
Technische Hochschule, for this important task14.
On their return to Ankara, the delegation decided to organize a project competition
with a limited number of participants. Since an international competition would require larger funds and a complex organization, the republican government preferred to
obtain the plans by way of a competition by invitation. In addition to the two German
planners, they also invited a French architect-planner, Léon Jausseley, to prepare the
plan for Ankara15. In July 1927, the three contestants were called to conduct field surveys in Ankara and they were given the necessary instructions and specifications about
the scope of the project and three base maps of Ankara16. Six months after the submission of the projects, in May 1929, the competition jury declared the proposal prepared
by Professor Hermann Jansen the winner17. Upon winning the competition, Jansen was
charged by the government with preparing detailed development plans for the capital,
which was executed by approval of the Council of Ministers in 1932.
During the ongoing process of the competition, Ankara İmar Müdürlüğü [Directorate
of Development of Ankara] was founded as a governmental institution affiliated to the
Ministry of the Interior, the major responsibility of which was the successful application of the development plan of Ankara. According to its foundation law, the main
executive board of this directorate was İmar İdare Heyeti [Commission of Development Management] that would be the major body responsible for the development of
Ankara in the following decades18.
The division of the town into functionally specialized zones, which was new to the
Turkish urban landscape, was one of the most outstanding aspects of Jansen’s planning
proposal for Ankara. Around a main axis from north to south, these zones for administrative, residential, industrial, educational and recreational uses were separated by wide
green belts and interconnected by a regular street network19. Jansen’s conservative approach was another principle in his plan, in which he defined Ankara’s citadel and its
immediate environment as a separate zone, representing the “traditional” pre-modern
past of Ankara. The “modern”, on the other hand, would be symbolized by the new
town. Jansen envisioned the Regierungs-Viertel [government quarter] of the new Turkish Republic as a symbolic and spatial counterpoint to the citadel. Besides Vekâletler
Kartiyesi [Ministries quarter] as the centre of the new town with modern governmental
buildings, Jansen’s Siedlung [settlement] approach for middle-and low density residenArchitecture and Power in the Ottoman and Turkish States
78
tial areas was also new to Turkish urban settlement patterns at that time. For these areas, the plan proposed 18 low-density quarters around the town, including houses with
gardens or maximum three storey blocks on small parcels20.
Gönül Tankut identifies the years between 1929 and 1939 as the “most planned period” of Ankara21. Following the pre-application period, the application period started
with the approval of Jansen’s plan in 1932 and lasted until the end of his contract at
the end of 1938. This planning period had several actors, each of whom had leading
Fig. 4
The Jansen Plan.
Source: Mamboury, 1933.
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roles during this process. The republican government, representing the administrative
power, was the leading actor in Ankara’s first planning period. The members of the Parliament, who made laws and regulations, controlled financial sources and gave political
decisions on the city at macro and micro levels, were also influential figures. Ankara
İmar Müdürlüğü and its decision mechanism, İmar İdare Heyeti, whose mission was
to prepare the plans and control their application, had the principal responsibility in
this process. Until its commitment to the Municipality in 1937, the directorate had
been the most active and autonomous actor in Ankara’s planning period and took many
critical decisions on buildings, building lots, expropriation or local plan applications.
The major role of the Municipality during this period was to develop and apply projects
for the basic urban services. The planner, Hermann Jansen, in contact with İmar İdare
Heyeti, several pressure and interest groups, and the citizens were other actors in this
planning process22.
Actually, the application of Ankara’s Development Plan was a problematic process
for several reasons. One of these was the lack of urban laws and regulations or the deficiencies of the existing ones23. Between the years 1932 and 1939, the Law of Building and Roads had been the only law in force. Though a few regulations had been enacted defining the principles of building and road construction and urban plot-block
arrangements, they were not sufficiently effective for the implementation of Jansen’s
plan. The technical problems arouse from the absence or defective implementation of
plans or cadastral maps; fiscal problems and the communication problems between
the planner and decision mechanisms of the government were other issues during
this process.
The end of the 1930s was a breaking point in the planning process of Ankara. In parallel with the increasing needs for housing due to unpredicted demographic growth
of the capital, the urban space of Ankara was subject to a substantial transformation,
which followed a different path than was proposed and predicted by Jansen. Parallel
to uncontrolled demographic growth from the 1930s, illegally developed settlement
areas, i.e. squatter areas, began to emerge in different parts of the city. Moreover, as a
result of increasing speculations on the urban fabric, which were particularly focussed
on the new areas around Yenişehir and Çankaya, Ankara began to expand beyond the
limits of the Jansen plan. In September 1938, the government decided to enlarge the
boundaries of Ankara’s development plan from 1500 ha to 16,000 ha. According
to Yavuz, this was the greatest achievement of the speculators, most of whom were
members of parliament, bureaucrats and wealthy residents of Ankara24. Following
the decision on the enlargement of the boundaries of the city, the Municipal Commission cancelled Jansen’s contract in December 1938. Being in a critical political
and economic conjuncture on the eve of the oncoming World War, this marked the
beginning of a new era for the Republic, and the end of the “most planned period”
of Ankara.
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Constructing the capital: the new building programme of the republic
It should be pointed out that planning the new capital of the Republic according to the
principles of an urban plan was actually a modern project at that period. The modernity
of this project lies in its systematic approach to the organization of a functional urban
structure. Within this structure, a public realm and modern ways of life were expected
to flourish by the creation of public spaces such as large boulevards, squares, recreation
areas, and the organization of specialized administrative, residential and industrial areas. As a result of these planning activities, Ankara began to reflect a modern city image
from the 1930s25.
In parallel with the planning practices of the new capital, the Republican state executed
a comprehensive building programme that should be seen as the tools of the social, cultural, administrative and economic modernization attempts of the new regime. What
was intended in this programme is to disseminate modern ways of life to the nation,
as well as to construct the model city for the new Republic. The building programme
of the early republican period focused on the construction of social, educational, financial, governmental and cultural buildings, which had been emerged in the public
space of Ankara as the symbols of the new regime from the early 1920s26. Within this
context, examining these architectural practices in a chronological order so as to see to
which building groups were given priorities through the ongoing social, administrative
and economic modernization attempts of the Republic may be useful.
Around the years following its declaration as the new administrative centre of the new
Republican State, Ankara was still confined within the limits of the old city around the
citadel. Therefore, the architectural practices meeting the urgent needs of a changing
order in the early years of the Republic took place in and around these spatial limits.
The first buildings constructed in the new capital in the 1920s were the administrative ones that were the first National Assembly (1924), Maliye Vekâleti [Ministry of Finance] (1925), Adliye Sarayı [Hall of Justice] (1925-26) and Hariciye Vekâleti [Ministry of Foreign Affairs] (1927). Following the opening of new development areas by the
1925 Lörcher plans on the south, a new street, Bankalar Caddesi [Avenue of Banks],
was opened between Taşhan Square and the southern edge of the city, on which the
first bank buildings, Osmanlı Bankası [Ottoman Bank] (1926), Ziraat Bankası [Bank
of Agriculture] (1926-29) and İş Bankası [Bank of Business] (1926), were constructed
as the earliest financial buildings of the capital27.
The institutional and architectural modernization attempts for educating the nation
had a priority in the Republican nation-building strategies, among which the acceptance of Tevhid-i Tedrisat Kanunu [The Law for the Unification of Education] for a
secular national education system – instead of a religious based system – and the acceptance of the Latin alphabet were the first acts. Within this ideological agenda, a
special importance was given to the construction of new school buildings, Halkevleri
[People’s Houses] and other centres, housing educational, social and cultural activities. The Ethnography Museum (1925-27) and People’s House (first built as Türkocağı)
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Fig. 5
Ankara in the 1930s. Kızılay Square and Atatürk Boulevard (above); Istasyon Street towards the
old city centre (below).
Source: Sözen-Tapan, 1973.
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Fig. 6
Bankalar Street.
(1927-30), located on the southern edge of old Ankara, were two early examples of
buildings representing the priority of education in Republican social modernization
plans28.
Following the invitation of Hermann Jansen to prepare the plan of Ankara in 1927,
the government invited many foreign architects and planners to Turkey in order to formulate the new building programme of the Republic along the principles of European
modernist architecture of that period29. These architects, most of which were from German-speaking countries, not only designed most of the state-sponsored buildings in the
capital, but also taught architecture and urban planning in the Academy of Fine Arts
and, then, in Istanbul Technical University, until the 1950s30. According to Bozdoğan,
these foreigners became the true ‘architects’ of Republican Turkey, as they played key
roles in the development of architectural education in the universities and generated
the architectural culture of the period in Turkey31.
Parallel to the development of Yenişehir area first along Lörcher’s and then Jansen’s
plan from the end of 1920s, many education buildings, most of which were designed
by these foreign architects, began to emerge in the urban scene of Ankara, particularly around these new developing areas. In terms of their architectural characteristics
and specialized programmes, these buildings became the physical symbols of both the
spatial and social modernity projects of the Republic. The first and most outstanding
education buildings of Ankara were designed by a Swiss architect, Ernst Egli, who was
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appointed as the consultant of the Ministry of Education and became the head of the
Department of Architecture of the Academy of Fine Arts in 1930. Besides his mission
at the Academy, Egli designed Musiki Muallim Mektebi [State Conservatory of Music]
(1927-29), Ticaret Lisesi [High School of Commerce] (1928-30), Yüksek Ziraat ve Baytar Enstitüsü [Higher Agricultural and Veterinary Institute] (1928-33), İsmet Paşa Kız
Enstitüsü [İsmet Paşa Girls’ Institute] (1930), Mülkiye Mektebi [Faculty of Political Sciences] (1935-36) and Türkkuşu Sivil Havacılık Okulu [Türkkuşu School of Civil Aviation] (1937-38) as the early examples of the Modernist [Modern Style] architecture in
the new capital32. Hıfzısıhha Okulu [School of Hygiene] (1928-32) by Robert Oerley,
Dil ve Tarih-Coğrafya Fakültesi [Faculty of Humanities] (1937-39) by Bruno Taut, Cebeci and Atatürk High Schools (1938) by Bruno Taut and Franz Hillinger and the
Faculty of Law (1938-40) by a Turkish architect, Recep Akçay, were other important
educational buildings that were erected in Ankara in the early Republican Period33.
The construction of health buildings in Ankara from the 1920s onwards should also
be related to the priorities of the Republican modernization programme, in which the
qualities of “health” and “youth” were idealized as the symbols of the new modern nation-state34. Sıhhat ve İçtimai Muavenet Vekâleti [Ministry of Health and Social Aid]
(1926-27), designed by a foreign architect, Theodor Jost, was the first governmental
building that was constructed in the new part of the city, Sıhhıye. In this area, the initial planning criteria of which was determined by 1925 Lörcher plan, two more health
buildings were constructed just after the construction of the Ministry. These are Refik
Saydam Hıfzısıhha Enstitüsü ve Okulu [Refik Saydam Hygiene Institute and School]
(1928-32), and Numune Hospital (1933) that were designed by Theodor Jost and Robert Oerley as early Modernist examples in the Republican building programme35. In the
years after the 1950s, Sıhhıye region became a specialized area where many hospitals
were erected as indispensable facilities of a modern urban life.
Parallel to the continuing institutional reforms for the new administrative order of the
Republican regime, the state-propelled building programme proceeded with the construction of governmental buildings. From the early 1930s, the triangular urban block
that was proposed by Jansen as Vekâletler Kartiyesi [Government Complex] on the
southernmost end of Yenişehir area was to become the administrative centre of the new
state. The government commissioned the projects of almost the entire Government
Complex to an Austrian architect, Clemens Holzmeister. He designed his first governmental buildings, the Milli Müdafaa Vekâleti [Ministry of National Defence] (built
in 1928-31) and Erkân-ı Harbiye Reisliği Dairesi [General Staff Headquarters] (built
in 1929-30) in 1927, at his office in Vienna. However, since the development plan of
Ankara was not definite at that time, these two buildings were constructed on a vacant
site in the countryside, next to which the triangular urban block of Vekâletler Kartiyesi
would later be planned36. After the approval of the Jansen plan in 1932, Holzmeister
designed the administrative buildings of the Government Complex, which were the
Dahiliye Vekâleti [Ministry of the Interior] (1932-34), Nafia Vekâleti [Ministry of Public Works] (1933-34), İktisat ve Ziraat Vekâleti [Ministry of Economy and Agriculture]
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Fig. 7
New education buildings of Ankara. Ismet Paşa Girls’ Institute (above); Faculty of Humanities
(below).
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(1934-35) and Yargıtay [Court of Appeal] (1930)37. Nevertheless, Holzmeister’s most
important building in Ankara is Büyük Millet Meclisi – Kamutay [Grand National
Assembly]. The project was selected as one of the three first prize winners of the international competition held in 1937. Of the three first prize-winning projects, all of
which presented an imposing and monumental official aspect, the government decided
to implement Holzmeister’s project as the new Grand National Assembly Building of
the Turkish Republic. The construction process started in 1938; however, since it was
interrupted during the years of the Second World War, the building could only be completed in 196038.
Fig. 8
Jansen’s Regierungs-Viertel (left); Holzmeister’s Grand National Assembly Building Project
(right).
Sources: Cengizkan, 2004, and “Arkitekt”, no. 4, 1938.
Within the ideological agenda of the republican revolutions, economical and industrial
development was seen as one of the major driving force behind the social modernity
project. Therefore, in order to meet the requirements of developing building and industrial sectors and to encourage the investments in these sectors, the state established
several public banks from the early 1930s, which resulted in the emergence of new
finance buildings in the urban fabric of the capital39. What was interesting is that although the governmental quarter was developed in the Yenişehir area, these buildings
were all constructed in the old part of Ankara, as the commercial centre of the city was
located there. Concomitant with other bank and finance buildings, being constructed
in the 1920s, the construction of the buildings of Divan-ı Muhasebat [Court of Public
Accounts] (1930) designed by Ernst Egli, the Central Bank (1931-33) and Emlak ve
Eytam Bankası [Bank of Estate] (1933-34) by Clemens Holzmeister, Etibank (193536) by Sami Arsev, Belediyeler Bankası [Bank of Municipalities] by Seyfi Arkan and
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Sümerbank (1937-38) by Martin Elsaesser transformed this part of the city into the
financial centre of Ankara40.
The Republican government placed special importance on the construction of social and
cultural gathering places that were meant to support a modern urban life and to play a
significant role in nation building. Sergi Evi [The Exhibition Hall] that was designed
by Şevki Balmumcu was the most prominent of these buildings. From its completion in
1934, Sergi Evi became the symbol of Republican modernization attempts in the public
space of the capital41. From the mid 1930s, a number of sports buildings and open public
recreation areas were built in Ankara. The 19 Mayıs Stadium (1934-1936), designed by
an Italian architect, Paolo Vietti-Violi, Gençlik Parkı [Youth Park] (1936-37) and Çubuk
Dam Recreation Area and Casino (1937-38) planned by a French architect, Théo Leveau,
and Atatürk Orman Çiftliği [The model farm and forest of Atatürk] were the most significant recreation areas in Ankara at that period42. According to Bozdoğan, these spaces,
introduced within the socio-cultural context of the early republican period, became truly
popular and were where people of all ages came “to stroll, to see, and to be seen”43.
Fig. 9
The Exhibition Hall (Sergi Evi).
Source: S. Türkoğlu Önge Archive.
87
By the 1930s, communication and transportation played a significant role in the agenda of the Republican state, where the construction of railways and station buildings
became one of the major enterprises. Within this context, the Central Railway Station
and Gar Gazinosu [Station Casino] buildings, which were designed by Şekip Akalın
and constructed between the years 1935 and 1937, formed an “impressive” entrance
gate to the new capital44.
The death of Atatürk on 10 November 1938 and the cancellation of Jansen’s contract one month later was a breaking point for the planning process of Ankara and
for the comprehensive building programme of the Republican Government. During
the 1940s, the construction of public buildings was decelerated due to the economic
difficulties of the War period. On the other hand, parallel to the unpredicted demographic growth of the capital, the building activities in Ankara tended towards housing
construction, which was widely directed by the private sector. Besides the continuing
construction of the Grand National Assembly, the most important investment in the
building programme of the Republican government during the 1940s was the building
of the mausoleum of Atatürk, Anıtkabir [Monument-Tomb]. In 1942, an international
project competition was held for Anıtkabir. The first prize-winning project, which was
designed by two Turkish architects, Orhan Arda and Emin Onat, was built and completed in 1955. From its completion, Anıtkabir was identified with Ankara and has
since been the symbolic monument-building of the capital of the Turkish Republic45.
The building programme of the Republican government represents the priority given
to the educational, social and cultural domains for the formation of a modern society.
In this context, architecture was perceived as the most significant medium to symbolize
the modernity of the new Republican regime. Within the architectural agenda of the
early republican period, the public buildings were mostly described as the symbols of
the power of state. As Sedad Hakkı Eldem stressed in one of his articles, “the Revolution should have the power to express its own character and should have a style compatible with its importance”46. In most cases, it was a Modernist architectural style that was
used in the public buildings to represent the power of the state and its social and spatial
modernization attempts.
The architectural tendencies in the very early years of the Republican period reflected
a national style, which is also seen as the continuation of Ottoman neo-classicism in
Turkish architectural historiography. However, this revivalist nationalist approach became obsolete and lost its importance from the end of the 1920s, parallel with the invitation of European architects to design the public buildings of the new capital. According to Bozdoğan, what these architects brought to the Turkish architectural agenda in
that period was an “austere, heavy and official-looking modernism”47. At one side of this
modernism, the impacts of the “Viennese” school, using the aesthetic features of neoclassical architecture, were dominant. Particularly, most of the governmental buildings
– such as Holzmeister’s Grand National Assembly, General Staff Headquarters or ministerial buildings in Vekâletler Kartiyesi – or some of the school buildings are typical
of this architectural style48. With their crushing monumental masses, these buildings
88
were erected as the symbols of Republican power in the public space of Ankara from
the early 1930s. In other cases, the “modernism” of the Republican architecture at that
period referred to the aesthetic features of the “Modern Movement” or “International
Style” that was pioneered by the Bauhaus and the CIAM [International Congress of
Modern Architecture] in Europe. This style, entailing a functional-rational planning
approach by means of using pure vertical and horizontal architectural forms, was identified as kübik [cubic], yeni [new] or asrî [modern] within Turkish architectural discourse from the 1930s49. In this context, Ernst Egli was the first European architect to
introduce “new architecture” into Turkey. His school buildings were praised as early
modernist examples in the public space of Ankara. His appointment at the head of the
Department of Architecture of the Academy of Fine Arts also resulted in a modernist
transformation of the architectural curricula of the Academy, which also influenced
the first-generation architects of the Republic. In the following years, the buildings of
these architects – such as the Sergi Evi, Station Casino or Bank of the Municipalities
– emerged as the modernist contributions to the new capital by young Turkish architects. From the end of the 1930s, however, the search for a “modern Turkish style” by
means of using more “national” or “regionalist” forms began to dominate the architectural discourse50. This attempt at “Nationalizing the Modern”, which was adopted by
many of the Turkish architects during the 1940s, is identified by Bernd Nicolai as an
“International National Style”51.
Conclusion
The making of the urban space of Ankara according to the principles of an urban plan was
actually a modern process that was supported by a comprehensive building programme
in the early Republican period. What makes this process modern was its systematic approach towards a functionally organized urban space, in which the public spaces – such
as the large boulevards, squares or recreation areas – were planned to supply the needs
of a modern social life and enhance a public realm. Parallel to these planning practices,
the building programme of the government, as part of the republican spatial modernity project, began to change the public space of Ankara, from the 1930s. Examining
the emergence of these buildings from a historical perspective, it can be seen that from
the 1920s, the architectural practices in the capital were focused on the construction of
educational, governmental, financial and cultural buildings in parallel with the priorities
of republican social, administrative and economic modernization attempts. Symbolizing
the new regime and imposing – or at least suggesting – modern ways of life to the society,
these buildings were used as the tools of the republican project of modernity.
Obviously, it was a courageous attempt if the lack of experience of the administrators
and poor economic conditions and deficiencies in legal, technical and administrative
mechanisms of the early republican period are considered. Looking back to this period
from today, the spatial modernity project that was conducted parallel to social modernization attempts can be identified as a successful project while creating a model city
89
for the country, in parallel with the revolutionary ideology of the new regime. However, from the 1940s, the urban space of Ankara began to develop in a different way
from what was initially intended. As a result of uncontrolled demographic growth, illegal squatter areas began to emerge outside the proposed limits of the city. Moreover,
the rising speculative demands, which were mostly coming from the bureaucratic elites
and wealthy residents of the capital, resulted in an unplanned urbanization from north
to south, particularly around Yenişehir and Çankaya. In this period, the building programme shifted from the public buildings towards the construction of housing in different parts of the city. After the 1950s, the urban fabric of Ankara was transformed far
more than it had been by the early republican interventions. Though the main lines of
the modern capital of Turkey were drawn by these early interventions, Ankara, with its
over 4 million residents, has a more complex urban structure today.
Notes
This was epitomized as “to be Western in spite of the West” in the discourses of the era as an expression
of the modernism of the Kemalist ideology. İ. Tekeli, Modernite Aşılırken Kent Planlaması, Istanbul
2001, p. 23.
1
By comparing Ankara, Canberra, Brasilia and Islamabad, which were four newly established planned
capitals in the 20th century, Tankut analyzes physical, social and political components of a capital-making process. G. Tankut, Bir Başkentin İmarı: Ankara 1929-1939, Istanbul 1993, pp. 21-38.
2
Ibid., p. 45; L. Vale, Architecture, Power and National Identity, New Haven 1992, pp. 56-162.
3
S. Bozdoğan, Modernism and Nation Building, Turkish Architectural Culture in the Early Republic,
Seattle - London 2001, p. 68.
4
5
“As established by our Constitution, Ankara is the administrative centre of the Republic of Turkey.
To build in Ankara a government seat worthy of an advanced state, by outfitting it with the necessary infrastructure, sanitary and scientific dwellings, and other essentials of civilization is one of the
most vital duties of our government as authorized and sanctioned by the Grand National Assembly.” This text was translated by Zeynep Kezer from the Assembly Record [Zabıt Ceridesi] dated
25 February 1341/1925. Z. Kezer, The Making of a National Capital, Ideology and Socio-Spatial
Practices in Early Republican Ankara, Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, University of California at
Berkeley 1992, p. 42.
The urban modernization project was introduced into the Ottoman Empire from the second half of
the 19th century, in parallel to the developments in the West. In the second half of the 19th century,
a few building regulations [ebniye nizamnamesi] were executed to solve the problems of the Ottoman
cities. However, the planning attempts developing around these regulations mostly remained as local
solutions, such as the re-planning of the conflagration areas, widening of the roads or planning of the
immigrant quarters. In any case, the lack of organized institutions, the economic deficiencies, as well
as the existing habits were the major constraints that made these planning attempts incremental. For a
detailed evaluation of the urban planning practices in the late 19th and early 20th centuries European
and Ottoman cities, see İ. Tekeli, Türkiye’de Kent Planlamasının Tarihsel Kökleri [Historical Roots of
Urban Planning in Turkey], in T. Gök (ed.), Türkiye’de İmar Planlaması [Urban Planning in Turkey],
Ankara 1980, pp. 8-112.
6
A. Cengizkan, Ankara’ nın İlk Planı, 1924-25 Lörcher Planı, Ankara 2004, pp. 17-18, 158-159.
7
“[…] Ankara şehri kendisine tabi olan bağ, bahçe, tarla ve otlakları içeride kalmak üzere tepelerden geçirilecek hududuyla bir şehremaneti teşkil eder. Bu hudut Cemiyet-i Umumiye-i Belediye tarafından tespit ve
8
90
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
24
22
23
haritası tanzim edilir. Bu harita Dâhiliye Vekâletince tasdik olunduktan sonra kesinleşir […]” M. Sarıoğlu,
Ankara-Bir Modernleşme Öyküsü, Ankara 2001, p. 35.
Cengizkan, Ankara’ nın İlk Planı cit., pp. 35-36, 158-159.
Tankut, Bir Başkentin İmarı cit., p. 54.
F. Yavuz, Ankara’nın İmarı ve Şehirciliğimiz, Ankara 1952, pp. 18-24. For further information on this
large-scale expropriation, see also: Tankut, Bir Başkentin İmarı cit., pp. 53-54; Tekeli, Türkiye’de Kent
cit., p. 55.
T.C. Ankara Şehremaneti, Ankara Şehrinin Profesör M. Jausseley, Jansen ve Brix Tarafından Yapılan
Plan ve Projelerine Ait İzahnameler, Ankara 1929, p. 3.
For a comprehensive study on Lörcher and his plans for Ankara, see Cengizkan, Ankara’ nın İlk Planı
cit.
Tankut, Bir Başkentin İmarı cit., p. 66; Yavuz, Ankara’ nın İmarı cit., p. 24; T.C. Ankara Şehremaneti,
Ankara Şehrinin cit., p. 3.
Yavuz, Ankara’ nın İmarı cit., pp. 25-26.
These were the 1924 Şehremaneti plan in 1/4000 scale and the 1924 and 1925 Lörcher plans in 1/2000
and 1/1000 scales, respectively. For further information, see: Cengizkan, Ankara’ nın İlk Planı cit., pp.
105, 211; Tankut, Bir Başkentin İmarı cit., p. 67; T.C. Ankara Şehremaneti, Ankara Şehrinin cit., pp.
4-6.
According to Gönül Tankut, the projects were evaluated in three stages. The preliminary evaluation
was made by a jury constituted by three persons, who were most probably the members of İmar İdare
Heyeti. The jury in the second stage had 26 members from different occupations such as parliamentarians, architects and engineers. In the last stage, the projects were evaluated by a six-member commission
and the winner was declared on 16 May 1929. Having heard from one of the jury members, Fehmi Yavuz suggested that Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was personally involved with the evaluation of the projects
and approved the Jansen plan as the winner. In his memoirs, Falih Rıfkı Atay, who was a jury member in
all three stages as the director of İmar İdare Heyeti, also stated that Mustafa Kemal Atatürk personally
examined all the plan proposals and declared the first place of Prof. Jansen’s plan. F.R.Atay, Çankaya:
Atatürk Devri Hatıraları, Ankara 1958, p.380; Tankut, Bir Başkentin İmarı cit., pp. 75-77; Yavuz, Ankara’ nın İmarı cit., p. 37.
Ibid., pp. 38-42.
The western parts of this artery were planned as an industrial zone [Industrie-Viertel], while the eastern
parts would be the education zone [Hochschul-Viertel]. The government quarter [Regierungs-Viertel]
was positioned to the south of the citadel, between the educational and industrial zones. The residential areas in Jansen’s plan were dispersed around the town in a way that the new officials of republican
government would be located around the administrative quarter, while the workers would live to the
northwest. H. Jansen, Ankara İli İmar Planı, Istanbul 1937, pp. 6-7.
The total area of these residential quarters in Jansen plan was foreseen as 1475 hectares for 271.000
inhabitants. Tankut, Bir Başkentin İmarı cit., pp. 79-82.
G. Tankut, Ankara İmar Planı Uygulamasının 1929-1939 Arasındaki Dikkat Çeken Verileri [The Significant Remarks during the implementation of Ankara’s Development Plan between 1929-1939], in
Y. Yavuz (ed.), Tarih İçinde Ankara II, Ankara 2001, p. 10.
Tankut, Bir Başkentin İmarı cit., Ch. 3 analyzes these actors in detail.
Ibid., pp. 159-161.
Yavuz, Ankara’ nın İmarı cit., p. 65. For further information about the speculations on urban space,
see: T. Şenyapılı, Baraka’dan Gecekonduya. Ankara’da Kentsel Mekanın Dönüşümü: 1923-1960, 2004,
p. 111; S. Aydın, K. Emiroğlu, E.D. Özsoy, Ö. Türkoğlu (eds.), Küçük Asya’nın Bin Yüzü: Ankara 2005,
pp. 393-396.
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28
29
30
31
34
35
32
33
38
36
37
39
40
41
42
91
About the urban planning ideology in the early republican period, see also F.C. Bilsel, Ideology and
urbanism during the early republican period: two master plans for Izmir and scenarios of modernization,
in “METU Journal of Faculty of Architecture”, 1997, 16, 1-2, pp. 13-30.
For the relationship between the nation building strategies of the Republican government and architectural discourse of the period, see Bozdoğan, Modernism cit.; E.A. Ergut, Making a National Architecture: Architecture and the Nation-State in Early Republican Turkey, Unpublished PhD Dissertation,
State University of New York at Binghamton, 1999.
İ. Aslanoğlu, Erken Cumhuriyet Dönemi Mimarlığı 1923-1938, Ankara 2001, pp. 30-39, 115-137,
240-262; M.Sözen, M.Tapan, 50 Yılın Türk Mimarisi, Istanbul 1973, pp. 99-165.
Aslanoğlu, Erken Cumhuriyet cit., pp. 194-196, 200-201; Bozdoğan, Modernism cit., pp. 87-97.
Teşvik-i Sanayi Yasası [Law for the Encouragement of Industry], which was passed in 1927, also gave the
foreign architects and planners opportunity to work in Turkey. Aslanoğlu, Erken Cumhuriyet cit., p. 55.
According to Bozdoğan, there were more than 200 German, Austrian and Swiss academics who occupied important positions in the universities in Ankara and Istanbul. Some 40 of them were architects
and planners who worked in Turkey as instructors, consultants, administrators and planners and played
key roles in the making of Ankara and the construction of public buildings. Most of these architects
and planners were refugees who opposed the National Socialist Regime in Germany and left their countries due to the oncoming World War. For further studies on these German-speaking architects and
planners, see: Bozdoğan, Modernism cit., p. 71; E. Hirsch, Anılarım: Kayzer Dönemi Weimar Cumhuriyeti Atatürk Ülkesi, trans. F. Suphi, Ankara 2000; F. Neumark, Boğaziçine Sığınanlar. Türkiye’ye
İltica Eden Alman İlim, Siyaset ve Sanat Adamları, 1933-1953, trans. Ş.A. Bahadır, Istanbul 1982; B.
Nicolai, Moderne und Exil: Deutschsprachige Architekten in der Türkei, 1925–1955, Berlin 1998.
Bozdoğan identifies the architecture of the period as the İnkılâp Mimarisi [Architecture of Revolution] and gives a particular attention to the binary oppositions such as old/new, traditional/modern or
progressive/reactionary while construing the period. Bozdoğan, Modernism cit., ch. 2.
İ. Aslanoğlu, Ernst A. Egli: Mimar, Eğitimci, Kent Plancısı, in “Mimarlık”, 1984, pp. 11-12, 15-19.
B. Taut, Mimari Bilgisi, Istanbul 1938; Aslanoğlu, Erken Cumhuriyet cit., pp. 184-191.
Bozdoğan, Modernism cit., p. 75.
Aslanoğlu, Erken Cumhuriyet cit., pp. 122, 209-213; Y. Yavuz, Ankara’da Mimari Biçim Endişeleri [The
Concerns of Architectural Form in Ankara], in “Mimarlık”, 1973, 11-12, p. 29.
Aslanoğlu, Erken Cumhuriyet cit., pp. 126-127, 153-154.
Ibid., pp. 128-136.
In the competition, the projects of the Austrian architect Clemens Holzmeister, the French Albert
Laprade and the Hungarian Alois Mezara were given the first prize of the 14 projects. The implementation of Holzmeister’s project as the new Grand National Assembly Building was decided by Atatürk
himself. Kamutay Müsabakası Programmeı Hülasası (1.Ödül: Clemens Holzmeister ) [The Summary
of the Programme of Grand National Assembly Competition (1st Prize: Clemens Holzmeister), in
“Arkitekt”, 1938, 4, pp. 99-132; Yeni Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi Binası [New Turkish Grand National
Assembly Building], in ”Arkitekt”, 1948, 4, pp. 38-39.
Aslanoğlu, Erken Cumhuriyet cit., pp. 47-54, makes a general evaluation of Turkey’s economic conditions between the years 1932 and 1938.
Aslanoğlu, Erken Cumhuriyet cit., pp. 251-262.
E.A. Ergut, Building to Exhibit ( for) the Nation: The Exhibition Building in Ankara, in M.Ghandour,
et al. (eds.), ”Sites of Recovery, Architecture’s (Inter)disciplinary Role. Proceedings. 4th International
Other Connections Conference”, Beirut, 25-28 October 1999, pp. 115-124.
P. Vietti-Violi, Les installations sportives d’Ankara, in “La Turquie Kémaliste”, 1936, 13, p. 12; Ankara
Gençlik Parkı, in “Nafıa İşleri Mecmuası”, 1935, 3, pp. 35-37.
92
43
E. Şevket, Avrupa’nın En Modern İstasyonu Ankara Garı [Ankara Station: The Most Modern Station of
Europe], in ”Yedigün”, 1939, 325, p. 15.
44
Sözen, Tapan, 50 Yılın Türk Mimarisi cit., pp. 246-47 makes a general evaluation and lists the articles
on the Anıtkabir Project competition.
45
46
S.H. Eldem, Milli Mimari Meselesi, in “Arkitekt”, 1939, 9-10, pp. 220-221.
47
From the second half of the 1930s, neo-classical architecture became the official style in some western
countries, particularly in Germany, and it was used to express the political ideology of their regimes. According to Albert Speer, neo-classicism, a style particular to that period, is not a characteristic style for
totalitarian regimes. However, it cannot be denied that from the end of the 1930s, neoclassicism was the
most favoured style for the design of public buildings, which were seen by these regimes as the propaganda
media and symbols of their powers. A. Speer, Inside the Third Reich, New York 1970, p. 130.
48
49
The architectural tendencies and discussions during the early years of Republic were propagated
by several periodicals, among which “Arkitekt” (1935-1945), “Mimar” [Architect], (1931-1934),
“Mimarlık” [Architecture], (1948-1974), “La Turquie Kémaliste” (1930s) and the official newspaper of the state, “Hakimiyet-i Milliye” [National Sovereignty] were prominent ones. For some of
the articles that had an impact on the Turkish architectural agenda during 1930s, see: Yeni Mimari:
Mimarlık Aleminde Yeni Bir Esas, in “Hakimiyet-i Milliye”, 2 January1930; Mimar Behçet ve Bedrettin, Türk İnkılap Mimarisi, in “Mimar”, 1933, 9-10, pp. 265-266; Mimar Behçet ve Bedrettin, Yeni ve
Eski Mimarlık, in “Mimar”, 1934, 6, p. 175; B.Ünsal, Zamanımız Mimarlığının Morfolojik Analizi,
in “Arkitekt”, 1937, 7, p. 204.
İ. Aslanoğlu, 1928-1946 Döneminde Ankara’da Yapılan Resmi Yapıların Mimarisinin Değerlendirilmesi
[Architectural Evaluation of the Official Buildings Built in Ankara in the Period 1928-1948], in A.T.
Yavuz (ed.), in Tarih İçinde Ankara [Ankara in History], Ankara 2000, pp. 275-277; E.A. Ergut, Searching for a National Architecture: The Architectural Discourse in Early Republican Turkey, in “Traditional
Dwellings and Settlements Working Paper Series”, 2000-2001, 130, pp. 101-126. See also Eldem, Milli
Mimari cit., pp. 220-221. S.H.Eldem, Yerli Mimariye Doğru, in “Arkitekt”, 1940, 3, pp. 69-74; A. Mortaş, Modern Türk Mimarisi, in “Arkitekt”, 1941, pp. 5-6, 116.
50
Bozdoğan, Modernism cit., chapter 6 identifies the architectural attempts of this period as “Nationalizing the Modern”. For “International National Style”, see Nicolai, Moderne und Exil cit., pp. 161-196.
51
Bıblıography
Ankara Gençlik Parkı [Ankara Youth Park], in “Nafıa İşleri Mecmuası” [ Journal of the Public Works],
1935, 3, pp. 35-37.
Arseven C.E., Yeni Mimari [New Architecture], Istanbul 1930.
Aslanoğlu İ., Evaluation of Architectural Developments in Turkey within the Socio-Economic and Cultural
Framework of the 1923-38 Period, in “ODTÜ Mimarlık Fakültesi Dergisi” [METU Journal of the Faculty
of Architecture], 1986, 2, pp. 15-41.
Id., 1928-1946 Döneminde Ankara’da Yapılan Resmi Yapıların Mimarisinin Değerlendirilmesi [Architectural Evaluation of the Official Buildings Built in Ankara in the Period of 1928-1948], in Yavuz A.T. (ed.),
in Tarih İçinde Ankara [Ankara in History], Ankara 2000, pp. 271-286.
Id., Ernst A. Egli: Mimar, Eğitimci, Kent Plancısı [Ernst Egli: Architect, Educator, Urban Planner], in
“Mimarlık” [Architecture], 1984, 11-12, pp. 15-19.
Id., Erken Cumhuriyet Dönemi Mimarlığı 1923-1938 [Early Republican Period Architecture 1923-1938],
Ankara 2001.
93
Atay F.R., Çankaya: Atatürk Devri Hatıraları [Çankaya: Memoirs of the Atatürk Period], Ankara 1958.
Aydın S., Emiroğlu K., Özsoy E.D., Türkoğlu Ö. (eds.), Küçük Asya’nın Bin Yüzü: Ankara [Thousand Faces
of Asia Minor: Ankara], Ankara 2005.
Bilsel F.C., Ideology and urbanism during the early republican period: two master plans for Izmir and scenarios of modernization, in “METU Journal of Faculty of Architecture”, 1997, 16, 1-2, pp. 13-30.
Bozdoğan S., Modernism and Nation Building, Turkish Architectural Culture in the Early Republic, Seattle
- London 2001.
Cengizkan A., Ankara’nın İlk Planı, 1924-25 Lörcher Planı [The First Plan of Ankara: 1924-25 Lörcher
Plan], Ankara 2004.
Eldem S.H., Milli Mimari Meselesi [The Case of National Architecture], in “Arkitekt”, 1939, 9-10, pp.
220-221.
Id., Yerli Mimariye Doğru [Towards a Native Architecture], in “Arkitekt”, 1940, 3-4, pp. 69-74.
Ergut E. A., Making a National Architecture: Architecture and the Nation-State in Early Republican Turkey,
Unpublished PhD Dissertation, State University of New York at Binghamton, 1999.
Id., Building to Exhibit ( for) the Nation: The Exhibition Building in Ankara, in M.Ghandour et al. (eds.),
Sites of Recovery, Architecture’s (Inter)disciplinary Role. Proceedings. 4th International Other Connections
Conference, Beirut, 25-28 October 1999, pp. 115-124.
Id., Searching for a National Architecture: The Architectural Discourse in Early Republican Turkey, in “Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Working Paper Series”, 2000-2001, vol. 130, pp. 101-126.
Hirsch E.E., Anılarım: Kayzer Dönemi Weimar Cumhuriyeti Atatürk Ülkesi [My Memoirs: Kaiser Period,
Weimar Republic, Atatürk’s Land], trans. F. Suphi, Ankara 2000 [orig. E.E. Hirsch, Aus den Kaisers Zeiten
durch Weimarer Republik in das Land Atatürks: Eine Unzeitgemässe Autobiographie, Munich 1982].
Jansen H., Ankara İli İmar Planı [Ankara Development Plan], Istanbul 1937.
Kezer Z., The Making of a National Capital, Ideology and socio-Spatial Practices in Early Republican Ankara, Unpublished PhD Dissertation, University of California at Berkeley, 1992.
Mamboury E., Ankara: Guide Touristique, Ankara 1933.
Mimar Behçet ve Bedrettin, Türk İnkılap Mimarisi [Turkish Revolution Architecture], in “Mimar” [Architect], 1933, 9-10, pp. 265-266.
Id., Yeni ve Eski Mimarlık [New and Old Architecture], in “Mimar”, 1934, 6, p. 175.
Mortaş A., Modern Türk Mimarisi [Modern Turkish Architecture], in “Arkitekt”, 1941, 5-6, p. 116.
Neumark F., Boğaziçi’ne Sığınanlar. Türkiye’ye İltica Eden Alman İlim, Siyaset ve Sanat Adamlar 19331953 [Bosphorus Refugees: German Scientists, Politicians and Artists emigrating into Turkey 1933-53],
trans. Ş.A. Bahadır, Istanbul 1982 [orig. F. Neumark, Zuflucht am Bosphorus: Deutsche Gelehrte, Politiker
und Künstler in der Emigration, Frankfurt 1980].
Nicolai B., Moderne und Exil: Deutschsprachige Architekten in der Türkei, 1925-1955, Berlin 1998.
Sargın G.A., Kamu, Kent ve Polytika, in Sargın G.A. (ed), Ankara’nın Kamusal Yüzleri. Başkent Üzerine
Mekan-Politik Tezler [The Public Faces of Ankara: Spatio-Political Treatises on the Capital ], Istanbul
2002, pp. 9-40.
Sarıoğlu M., Ankara-Bir Modernleşme Öyküsü [Ankara: A Modernization History], Ankara 2001.
Şevket E., Avrupa’nın En Modern İstasyonu Ankara Garı [Ankara Station: The Most Modern Station of
Europe], in “Yedigün”, 1939, 325.
Sözen M., Tapan M., 50 Yılın Türk Mimarisi [Turkish Architecture of the last 50 Years], Istanbul 1973.
Speer A., Inside the Third Reich, New York 1970.
Şenyapılı T., Baraka’dan Gecekonduya. Ankara’da Kentsel Mekanın Dönüşümü: 1923-1960 [From Barrack
to Slum. Transformation of Urban Space in Ankara 1923-1960], Istanbul 2004.
94
Tankut G., Bir Başkentin İmarı: Ankara 1929-1939 [The Development of a Capital: Ankara 1929-1939],
Istanbul 1993.
Id., Jansen Planı: Uygulama Sorunları ve Cumhuriyet Bürokrasisinin Kent Planına Yaklaşım [The Jansen
Plan: Its Application Problems and the Approach of the Republican Bureaucracy to the Plan], in Yavuz
A.T. (ed.), Tarih İçinde Ankara [Ankara in History], Ankara 2000, pp. 301-316.
Id., Ankara İmar Planı Uygulamasının 1929-1939 Arasındaki Dikkat Çeken Verileri [Significant Remarks
during the Application of Ankara’s Development Plan between 1929-1939], in Yavuz Y. (ed.), Tarih İçinde
Ankara II [Ankara in History II], Ankara 2001, pp. 9-15.
Taut B., Mimari Bilgisi, Istanbul 1938.
T.C. Ankara Şehremaneti, Ankara Şehrinin Profesör M. Jausseley, Jansen ve Brix Tarafından Yapılan Plan
ve Projelerine Ait İzahnameler [Explanations on Ankara’s Plans and Projects, being designed by Professor
Jausseley, Jansen and Brix], Ankara 1929.
Tekeli İ., Türkiye’de Kent Planlamasının Tarihsel Kökleri [Historical Roots of Urban Planning in Turkey],
in Gök T. (ed.) Türkiye’de İmar Planlaması [Urban Planning in Turkey], Ankara 1980, pp. 8-112.
Tekeli İ., Bir Modernite Projesi Olarak Türkiye’de Kent Planlaması [Urban Planning in Turkey as a Modernity Project], in Tekeli İ. (ed.), Modernite Aşılırken Kent Planlaması [Urban Planning Beyond Modernity],
Istanbul 2001, pp. 10-34.
Ünsal B., Zamanımız Mimarlığının Morfolojik Analizi [Morphological Analysis of the Architecture of
Today], in “Arkitekt”, 1937, 7, p. 204.
Yavuz F., Ankara’nın İmarı ve Şehirciliğimiz [The Development of Ankara and Our Urbanism], Ankara
1952.
Yeni Mimari: Mimarlık Âleminde Yeni Bir Esas [New Architecture: A New Fact in Architecture], in “Hâkimiyet-i Milliye”, 2 January 1930.
Vale L., Architecture, Power and National Identity, New Haven 1992.
Vietti-Violi P., Les installations sportives d’Ankara, in “La Turquie Kémaliste”, 1936, 13, p. 12.
Contesting Urban Space
in EarlyRepublicanAnkara
ZEYNEP KEZER, University
of California at Berkeley
thatprovidedvariousreligiousandsocialservices,
Vakifs,piousfoundations
of the OttomanEmpire.Theywereseverelyunderwerecriticalinstitutions
minedduringTurkey'stransitionfroman empireintoa nation-statebecause
with
theirautonomouscharacterandreligiouspremiseswereincompatible
the modernist,secular,andhomogenizing
principlesof the newregime.Bethemhada
the processof dismantling
cause vakifsweremajorlandowners,
strongspatialcomponent.Focusingon the confiscationof a vakifcemetery
duringthe constructionof Turkey'snewcapital,Ankara,this essay demonstrateshowstructuralchangeswithinthe state andits institutions
triggered
unprecedentedcontestationsoverspace by openingit to newuses andusthe urbanculers whiledisplacingthe old,therebyprofoundly
transforming
turallandscape.
worse for prospective job seekers who migrated to the city and
worked in low-paying jobs. Not surprisingly, since their wages were
insufficient to maintain agreeable living standards, they landed in
the slums and squatter settlements, such as Sogukkuyu, that mushroomed on the outskirts of the city (Figure 2).
However, Sogukkuyu was not just another squatter settlement; there was more to its story than met the eye. Located on the
site of a former cemetery that had been expropriated from a pious
foundation, it stood on ground contested by the Treasury, the Pious Foundations Administration, and the city. The delay in reaching a resolution pitted state agencies, the city administration, and
NEWSPAPER
FEATUREDthe citizens against one another. Furthermore, the indeterminacy of
WEEKLY
THE MARCH 12, 1934 ISSUEOFALOCAL
to a variety of other unpreca curious essay about the fate of Sogukkuyu, a squatter settlement its ownership opened Sogukkuyu
such
as
edented
uses,
equestrian training. These activities overin Ankara (Figure 1). Accompanied by photographs, the article
but
were
in
disparate in nature and juxtaposed the
space
elaborated on the miserable conditions of life in this northwestern lapped
of
the
rich
and
powerful with those of the poor and the
corner of town: "Sogukkuyu gets its name from a cold water well lifestyles
in
contrasts.
by the vegetable gardens. On days when there is no rain, and mud marginal, resulting jarring
of multilayered displacements-distale
is
one
Sogukkuyu's
does not claim every passing pair of shoes, the well becomes a gathof
of
placements
things, people, and of institutions; displacements
ering place where the locals stage their fights over who gets to fill
of narrative strategies, and of collective imagiof
frameworks,
legal
their bucket with cold water under the scorching summer heat. This
In
nation.
this
essay, by using the parable of Sogukkuyu, I intend
is also where with the very first spring blossoms, young lovers with
examine
to
how,
during a time of profound social, cultural, and
hearts afire will stroll down past piles of manure and refuse to extransformation,
people coped with change. I contend that
political
change their vows."' The witty and uninhibited sarcasm of these
far beyond their control, people still
in
of
constraints
the
face
words cleverly encouraged the reader to excavate further the comworked
out
their
own
strategies for survival and that even if they
plex and layered story of dislocations and disorienting encounters
not
able
to
were
change the contexts of their decisions, they quite
that took place in this marginal neighborhood. Written barely a
to claim a place of their own in Ankara's history
decade after Ankara became the capital of the Turkish Republic, the literally managed
as
modern
Turkey's capital.
article exposed the soft underbelly of the process of building a modern capital in this newly formed nation-state.
Formerly a modest provincial town, Ankara rose to promiof Space and NewUrbanismin Ankara
nence in the aftermath of World War I as the launching pad of an The Rationalization
all-out counteroffensive against the extensive Allied occupation of
the Ottoman Empire. Upon victory, the nationalist leaders who led Turkey's new leaders intended Ankara to be the model site where
the independence struggle decided to sever ties with all things Ot- the structural transformation of the state could be inscribed into the
toman and build a modern state with its own institutions, laws, and landscape and where the sociospatial practices of this new order
could be acted out. To make a city that embodied their visions of
political culture. The making of a new capital was an integral comthe leaders of the republic organized a competition in
ponent of these comprehensive reforms, and Ankara was forever modernity,
and
eventually commissioned Herman Jansen, a professor of
transformed by this process. Whereas the population was 20,000 in 1928
urban
design at the University of Berlin, to plan Ankara. Jansen's
1920, it had soared to 75,000 in 1927, and to 123,000 in 1935.2
the city included such elements as uniform residential
for
Housing was scarce and of low quality, yet rents were exorbitantly plan
streets, large tree-lined avenues, and parks, as well as such building
high. Even relatively well paid government officials had a hard time
as museums, sports complexes, and concert halls, which were
finding an affordable and decent place to live. The situation was far types
new to Turkey.
The most striking aspect of this plan was the grouping of
Journal ofArchitectural Education, pp. 11-19
similar land uses within the same part of the city. Accordingly, the
? 1998 ACSA, Inc.
S1
Kezer
K6semiz Buca4pmaz:
Mahallesi
"Soukkuyu,,
Ne
olacak?
Burays Akk6prQ diyealer
de vardir. Fakst bu yerinde
bir ann sayulmamaladar.So-
ukkuyu, Akknprfntaupoyrasnas rastlar. Ankaramsabir bagka kq6esidir.
Still that ltotter!...
- What, 25 Liras a month?
- This, slir, is Ankara!
omektupl..
HalI
Soukkuyudan
Bu semte "Soukkuyu, adl
verilmesinin sebebi burada yazmnsuyu Fek souk olan bir
What the holl is this, sir?
bir grlrUnOy.
kuyunun mevcudiyetindendir.
Hakikaten buglin de soukkuyu k6prlislnii gertikten sonra
,
ry,->,
\••
-,•
fffi_~??f_--..
bostanlar
arasindan
blr gtIrUnUp daha
sola ay- batakhlin
eol takip edilirse, iki
kathl sari bir binanin ve bir
rlan
,
yaninda kuyu gBril-
liir. Yalmz qimdikuyu, glknk
yerine bir tulumba igletmek-
•
-I--.
t&
+'___
Ne, Ayda 25 lira mi ? Fakat
burasi nedir ki beyimn ?
1urasi, Ankaradur efendiml
1-
2. Renter:What,25 TL?Whatthe hellis this?
Thissir, is Ankara!
Landlord:
andexpenseof findinga
Thiscartoondepictingthe difficulty
placeinAnkaraappearedinAnkaraHaftasion November9,
similarto
is remarkably
1934. Thecottage inthe background
the housingstock availablein Sogukkuyu.
Kirahlk Ev
tedir. Yakmurlu havalarm her yazm her giSnide "Souk su,
papuqtan alacakh q kan yapip- anyanlann kavia d6ijil yeridir
kan c amuru oimayinca, bursas
was the titleof the article
willbecomeof Sogukkuyu?
1. "What
thatappearedinthe weeklyAnkaraHaftasion March12, 1934.
(Sona 6 snc sayfada)
September1998 JAE52/1
12
R ERE
ization and spatial separation.3 Jansen introduced these new principles of modern planning in his plan for Ankara. Although he did
not seem to espouse the ideologies of radical architectural thought
or the modernism of the International Congress of Modern Architecture (CIAM) that were prevalent during his time, Jansen certainly was addressing the same concerns and providing similar
solutions to some of them.4
This new approach to urbanism ushered in new mental templates for imagining the city by recasting its spatial order. At the
same time, however, it was clearly antithetical to long-established
spatial traditions of Anatolia, where historically the urban fabric
consisted of a fine texture of mixed uses that spilled onto one another quite informally. Prerepublican Ankara was organized in
much the same fashion, with its narrow and irregular streets,
mosques, and shrines small and large scattered around town in
mixed residential neighborhoods and intertwined with commercial
structures. Jansen did not touch much of the old town except for
demolitions to the south of the citadel to make room for large arteries because the land was physically too congested and legally too
complicated for him to work on. Instead, he concentrated on establishing a development pattern and on regulating urban growth in
the new parts of town outside the citadel (Figures 4 and 5). Yet the
fact that the sites of new development were unbuilt did not necessarily mean that they were unclaimed. On the contrary, the environs of the citadel were covered with cemeteries and sacred hills that
belonged to the Pious Foundations Administration.
The Ankara Master Planning Bureau, with its extraordinary
executive powers, was in charge of solving problems posed by complex land tenure issues and clearing urban land for the implementation of the plan. Founded in 1928 specifically to enforce the plan,
the bureau received a high degree of autonomy and ample state
funding because government officials regarded the making of the
"republic's capital" as a matter that lay beyond the purview of the
Ankara municipality but that directly concerned the state.5 The
bureau had special provisions for the acquisition of property that lay
within the area of eminent domain, but most importantly, it was
specifically entitled to expropriate land that belonged to the State
Treasury or the Pious Foundations at no cost and with no appeals
allowed.' According to the Ankara Master Plan, Sogukkuyu and all
other burial grounds in and around the city had to be moved and
consolidated at a new site appropriately labeled the "Modern Cemetery" to make room for new development. What is more, the bureau demanded that the move be at the expense of the original
owner, which in all cases was unmistakably a pious foundation.
Gradually, as land became available, many of the high-profile build-
NNKcn
STADIUM ;I5~
,4P"RT.-;:
ISTANBRAL
UAR
41,
rz
~
USES~t~L~
U
N
ANKARA
ne.
iL??NKAYA
:1
HERMAN JANSEN'S PLAN FOR THE DIVISION OF THE ZONES
(FLACHENAUFTEILUNGSPLAN)
SURFACE
STREETSIST ORDER
SURFACE STREETS 2ND ORDER
RAILWAY
OLD TOWN
l
NEW
NEW
am,,
OLD
iMmm-,.
OLD
NEW TOWN
BUSINESS DISTRICT
GREEN BELT
3. Specialization
of the urbanspace. Redrawnbythe author
fromAnkara'sMasterPlansubmittedby HermanJansenin 1928
to the AnkaraUrbanDesignCompetition.
new ministries were located within the same vicinity in the new
downtown, and institutions of higher education and cultural activities were located slightly to the south of the citadel. Residential
neighborhoods, for their part, were distributed around town in a
way that acknowledged the different class and cultural backgrounds
of the residents. Thus government officials would live close to the
ministries, while blue-collar workers would be located to the northwest (Figure 3). This new rationalization of urban space in Turkey,
first implemented in Ankara and recommended by the government
for cities throughout the country, was based on functional special13
Kezer
ANKARAIN 1928
?
I.fit.
..
........
. . . . .... ..
.
.
.
,
: ?
:
W',
L?A
100
.0"5:i00
zII
0
4,2 a
tc
~L~PnP~a.DE
1000
....,i
wo
~9Alt
50
?
'',
'•;\
D•lu
o 5
\4
,t
•
B1C"
,',':?
42
!
10 0~
•
,,, .
19TH CENTURYGOVERNMENTDISTRICT
[
.
19TH CENTURYCOMMERCIALDISTRICT
I
'
HISTORICALCOMMERCIALDISTRICT
,
.
AGRICULTURALLAND
,
,
,.
NEIGHBOURHOOD MOSQUES
...........
CEMETERIES
-
RIVERS
4. Ankarain 1928. Thestreet patternis irregular,
andlanduse
is mixed.Redrawnbythe authorbased on the 1839 Ankaramap
by MajorvonVincke,the 1926 Municipal
Mapof Ankara(Ankara
SehremanetiHaritasi),
andSevgiAkture'smapsof Ankarain 19.
YuzyilSonundaAnadoluKentiMekansalYapiC(ozumlemesi
OrtaDoguTeknikUniversitesi
(Ankara:
1978).
Yayinlari,
ings of the new capital, such as the Parliament, the Ethnographic
Museum, the Ankara Model Hospital, and the Central Bank of
Turkey, to name a few, began to take over sites that had once been
urban cemeteries or other foundation property.7
As suggested by these few examples, the making of Ankara
went far beyond inaugurating modern institutions in new buildings, but permanently displaced certain patterns of use and movement in the city as part of that very process. Taking credit in the
name of the republican administration for "dealing for the first time
with the disorderly and hideous condition of urban cemeteries,"
Minister of Interior Siikrii Kaya stated, "In the past, for some reason, respect for the dead was shown at the expense of the well-being of the living. The most beautiful portions of urban real estate
were ... use[d] as cemeteries. And graveyards constituted the exclusive view of many a nice home. Wouldn't you agree with me that
things are much better today?"'8
Kaya's portentous words suggest that he did not merely want
the cemeteries out of sight, but that he wanted them out of mind.
More than lending a strong support to modern urbanism, his words
reveal a profound shift in the official view of life, death, and spirituality. To appreciate this change, we need to situate the cemeteries
not only in their physical context, but also within the institutional
context of an intense network of social and religious services offered
by the pious foundations, known as vakifi in Turkish.9
i~W.
PA
,•A
1F---G
inrelationto otherimportant
referencepointsof
5. Sogukkuyu
the growingcapital.(Basedon a mapof Ankarapublishedin
vol 1. [Ankara:
T.C.MarifVekaletiYayinlari,
InoniAnsiklopedisi,
1942].)
Dismantlingthe ReligiousLandscape
Vakifcomplexes were indispensable elements of Ottoman urbanism. The largest and best known examples that graced the skyline
of Istanbul were funded by sultans to bolster their public image and
legitimacy as benevolent rulers providing for the needs of their subjects.10More commonly, vakifcomplexes were used to instigate urban development and imparted their characterto towns throughout
the empire." Typically, the services they offered included the building and maintenance of mosques, schools, orphanages, hospitals,
burial grounds, baths, and so on. To support these, vakifi often were
14
endowed with revenue-generating properties, such as stores, fields,
and farms. They provided work and places to work; gave shelter to
the poor and food to the needy; and five times a day they provided
a place for the faithful to commune together in the name of God
Almighty. Since they performed so many functions within a given
community, vakifswere critical institutions of Ottoman urban life
that brought faith down to earth and made it concrete and practical.
However, things took a very different turn once the republican administration came to power. There were mainly two reasons
for this change: In the first place, the motley functions that the
vakifsprovided had an undeniably important part in sustaining the
constitutive role religion played in Ottoman society. As a major
source of collective allegiances, however, religion presented an ideological challenge to the Turkish nationalism espoused by the republic. Thus to undercut the prominence of religion in social life, the
republican administrators promptly proceeded to dismantle the infrastructure of sites and services maintained by the vakifs. To justify these interventions, they argued that in a modern nation, faith
could no longer be understood as a collective practice by birthright.
Rather, they claimed, it was a private choice made by individual
citizens and was not meant to intersect with the public sphere. Subsequently, they decreed that the formation and sustenance of a pious community of believers was not in the purview of public
institutions, such as vakifs.
In the second place, the republican leaders wanted to provide
a uniform and standardized institutional and legal framework for all
operations nationwide. Instead, they had inherited from the Ottoman Empire a complex tapestry of unique and idiosyncratic organizations entrenched in myriad local processes that categorically
defied such homogenization. Motivated by faith but brought to life
by different individuals under different circumstances, each vakif
was run according to its own rules and regulations and supported
specific causes with its revenues. Profitable commercial enterprises
lent the vakifs a considerable degree of autonomy. Moreover, they
were based on and protected by religious law rather than a secular
civil code, and they operated without the supervision of a central
authority. Therefore, they appeared to republican administrators to
be unruly and prone to corruption. As far as the administratorswere
concerned, this was an outdated and helplessly fragmented system
that had to be rationalized.12
This was easier said than done. Vakifswere pervasive entities
that were very difficult to dismantle. In Turkey, there were no fewer
than thirty thousand of them."3 Therefore, instead of trying to
purge them completely, the republican administrators looked for
15
ways of taking them over, centralizing their administration and
functions, and ultimately subordinating them to the interests of the
new state. In fact, Ottoman reformists had already attempted to
rationalize the management of this immense network of variegated
organizations. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, most of
the vakifswithin the Ottoman Empire fell under government supervision; later a ministry that dealt with religious services and the administration of the vakifs was founded."1 In other words, the
Ottomans had been working on a centralized system that was taken
over by their republican counterparts. However, the policies of the
latter were fundamentally different because their predecessors had
never intended to challenge the premises of the vakifsystem or to
dismantle the religious law (shariya)that sustained it. The displacement of the legal framework that guaranteed perpetuity constituted
the vital blow for the vakifsystem.'5 Several laws passed between
1925 and 1935 conveniently authorized the state to take over all of
the assets of foundations that it deemed to have "expired."If a vakif
no longer had regents or beneficiaries, or its mission was no longer
seen as valid or viable, all of its property and assets could be transferred to the Treasury to fund the chosen projects of the cashstrapped Turkish state.16
Although in theory this seemed to be an especially promising
strategy, in practice it was far from smooth. The ambiguous definition of an "expired" foundation gave enormous leeway to state
agencies in deciding which foundation to prey on. Yet it also
sparked prolonged legal battles, as in the case of Sogukkuyu. Even
before the Ankara Master Planning Bureau demanded to take it
over, the vakifadministration had taken the State Treasury to court
for unlawfully confiscating the cemetery. The bureau's request was
stalled indefinitely because the original imbroglio remained unresolved. Ironically, while they fought over the legal ownership of the
cemetery, none of these agencies actually staked a claim on the
physical possession of the property itself, thus leaving it vulnerable
to the occupation by fiat of those who did. At the interstices of this
legal impasse, the city's newest and poorest immigrants found a
window of opportunity to make themselves a home by physically
holding onto the land. Describing this landscape of poverty, the
article voiced ruthless cynicism packaged as though it were tonguein-cheek humor: "The style of the houses here, the stores, the roads
and the avenues are simply something else. As opposed to 'reinforced concrete' [betonarme], here the homes are made of 'reinforced tin' [tenekearme]. This is where you will find the finest
dwellings made from discarded gas containers filled with mud,
stacked on top of each other, supported by a wooden pole or two
and roofed by layers of flattened tin cans""17
(Figure 6).
Kezer
Some of these phyllo dough dwellings even have their very own
lovingly kept dossiers at the Planning Bureau. At times the ax
of law comes down crashing through their roofs.... Yet this
neighborhood keeps growing. At night, the people. .. work
like an army to build these. ... The police come and tear them
down, only to find the very next day a largerone mushrooming on its roots. "Reinforcedtin" construction takes little to put
together. A vacant lot may be transformed overnight, and in
the morning you will wake up to see sunlight reflecting from
the window panes of a "tin palace," with its makeshift chimney, steadily smoking.20
6. A squatter'scottage in Sogukkuyu.
(Ankara
Haftasi,March
12, 1934.)
Although Sogukkuyu provided an opportunity to erect squatter housing, the poor were not the only intruders in this place. Located right next to the stables of the Ankara Equestrian Club, this
was also the playground for the rich and the powerful. Since the
cemetery had been moved and as long as there did not seem to be
an official owner, anybody who was somebody in Ankara would
show up clad in their spiffy imported equestrian outfits to ride
horses on balmy afternoons. This was an equally illicit invasion of
the site. But the activities of the Equestrian Club were welcome
because they showcased the bourgeois sensibilities of the new elite
and thereby reinforced the image of modernity that the leaders of
the new state wanted to project at home and abroad. As a former
general who had won battles on horseback, Prime Minister Ismet
Inanii had a particular liking for horses. He frequently sponsored
competitive and social activities around the sport and attended the
races on a regular basis. As a result, equestrian activities were given
a very high profile in the social life of early republican Ankara. The
dailies carried news about the races on their covers, and official propaganda publications frequently featured images of the social activities at the Equestrian Club as well as photographs of the stables and
training sessions. Meanwhile, the presence of the squatters who ostensibly shared the same space was impossible to detect from the
abundant pictures in these publications. In fact even after careful
examination, none of the pictures disclose the slightest hint about
this unusual overlapping of such incompatible uses (Figure 7).
Neither part of the old town left intact by the planners nor
of
the modern city envisioned by the nationalists, this was a
part
third Ankara lying at the gap between unrealized visions and displaced institutions. In a 1935 speech, Minister of Interior Sukrii
Kaya, who saw the likes of Sogukkuyu as shadow landscapes that
were necessary but undesirable, observed:
This third Ankara consists of cheap houses built overnight
and sold for anywhere between 4-15 Turkish Liras. Last year
the city tried to deal with them .... But you will remember
that was very painful to watch. . . . We will move them elsewhere . . . but we postponed that because we are in the
middle of winter. I feel better knowing they at least have a
roof over their heads. . . . But clearly we do not intend to
leave these ugly places with dirt roads there for good. We are,
for instance, determined to cleanse the area by the Equestrian
Club [Sogukkuyu].... They may have the material in large
supply, but the land does not belong to them. So in fact we
can demolish them anytime we want.'8
Kaya clearly wanted to demolish them because they were
unsightly and unsanitary. However, he was in no position to stop
the constant influx of people to the city, nor did his government
have the financial prowess to provide humane alternatives for the
squatters. Caught in a web of difficult choices, he seemed to be resigned to the status quo. His ambivalence on the matter gave the
phenomenally resilient residents of Sogukkuyu even more room to
maneuver. In fact, according to the article, the city inspectors had
already gone to visit them quite a few times, but they had managed
to bounce back every time:"9
Visionsand Divisionsin the UrbanLandscape
The glaring contradictions of this landscape must have been what
caught the eye of the author of the article in the weekly magazine
Ankara Hafiasi who, rather than providing a brief informational
report, chose to launch an effective critique of the government re16
chant for this sport as spectators watching it for hours at a time, do
not even have a donkey of their own."21Although it was delivered
as a casual remark, this was a particularly poignant statement. Here
the author was clearly invoking the widespread assumption that in
the Anatolian countryside, the donkey constituted the most basic
means of transportation and that even the poorest peasant household was expected to own one. If Sogukkuyu's squatters, by and
large recent immigrants from the countryside, did not have donkeys, this clearly signaled their displacement from their places of
birth, emphasizing that they no longer were part of the rural population. However, carefully edited out from the official representations of "ideal urban life" in Ankara, the squatters were not seen by
the government as part of the new capital's urban population either.
Excluded from the official vision of a modern and exemplary
capital, the squatters' presence in the city could hardly be ignored.
7. Membersof the AnkaraEquestrian
Clubintrainingat
Their
labor was what kept the frantic pace of construction going.
Kamaliste32-40 [Aug.1939-Dec.
(LaTurquie
Sogukkuyu
1940]:61.)
the streets and the houses of the wealthy. They drove
cleaned
They
the buses that took people to work every morning and back home
every evening. They served tea or coffee at their offices or waited on
the
unfair
and
uneven
urban
in
Ankara.
To
them at the restaurants. They were the gofers, the janitors, the
garding
development
the
his
of
observations
he
heighten
impact
deployed particularly handymen; in short, they were Ankara's workforce. Even if what
Like
the
who
taken advantage of they called home was as elusive as they were in the eyes of official
had
powerful strategies.
squatters
the gap between the real and the legal, he chose to mock the weak- Ankara, their invisibility did not translate into resignation. They
nesses and the lacunae in language. He borrowed narrative struc- never stopped rebuilding and found ingenious ways of doing so
tures from contemporary novels that appealed to the cultural quickly, cheaply, and efficiently. They had little to lose, so they took
sensibilities of the elite but undermined their romantic associations various degrees of risk as they bet on legal delays and the impossiby using them to describe the darkest squalor. To depict the hous- bility of implementing the plan uniformly across the city. In fact,
ing stock of the poor in Sogukkuyu, he appropriated the terminol- Fehmi Yavuz, who was both a professor of planning and an insightogy used to promote high-style modern architecture in professional ful observerof Ankara'sdevelopment in those years, noted that "they
and propaganda publications. Moreover, he freely subverted the learned to gauge the government's actions so well that they often
meanings of words or invented new ones. He labeled Sogukkuyu's shrewdly chose to build their homes on national holidays when the
prevalent construction technique "reinforced tin" (tenekearme)as limited police force would be busy keeping vigil on ideologically
opposed to the industry standard reinforced concrete (betonarme). charged celebratory pageants."22Their stubborn ways and clandesHe spoke of the jerry-built shacks but called them palas, a term that tine activities eventually paid off. In their struggles to hold their
referred to new apartment houses with modern amenities. Dirt ground, the squatters learned to organize, so that when the opporroads became "avenues" in his writing, and roadside stalls were tunity arose, they turned their voices into votes that forever changed
"stores." There was more than a whimsical sense of humor in this urban politics, thereby forcing the authorities to recognize them.23
In Ankara, where the population was undergoing unceasing
peculiar rhetorical strategy. These unpredictable shifts in meaning
and the juxtaposition of jarring contrasts provided a compelling
expansion, many similar settlements gradually encroached on the
textual analogy for the disorienting encounters experienced by the plan, primarily on comparably contested properties. Those slated
squatters and visitors of Sogukkuyu on a daily basis: "Those un- for extensive land uses and on which no immediate action was taken
aware that this is also the site of the Ankara Equestrian Club and
following. expropriation were particularly open both to squatter
its stables may be puzzled by the frequent sightings of luxury cars settlements and other illicit uses (Figure 8). Such uses were known
with official or diplomatic plates in the neighbourhood. Yet the to the authorities, who sometimes could not and at other times
inhabitants of Sogukkuyu, who have developed an unusual pen- would not do much to stop them. In a city where the male popula17
Kezer
tion was double that of the female population, Bentderesi was tacitly zoned for prostitution, and the nearby Hacettepe was where
gangs and pimps conducted business.24 All constituted shadow
landscapes that according to court documents were, without a
doubt, legal entities, but officially they did not exist. Everyone knew
where they were, but no map defined them. Born out of the displacement of the vakifinstitution and its legal framework, they
seemed to belong to nobody and were therefore open to incursions
by everybody. Not surprisingly, then, it was in these shadow landscapes, these spaces with a dual character,that rich and poor, sacred
and profane, intentional and accidental were thrown together in
unprecedented ways. And it was in these shadow landscapes where
the very principles of Ankara's master plan, which demanded the
separation of uses and users, were challenged and ultimately subverted by the actions of those on both ends of the power spectrum.
Notes
1. F. G. "Sogukkuyu Ne Olacak?"Ankara Hafiasi, Mar. 12, 1934: 4.
2. Rusen Keles, Eski Ankara'da bir Sehir Tipolojisi (Ankara: Ankara
Oniversitesi Siyasal Bilgiler Fakiiltesi Yayinlari, 1971), p. 5.
3. For the zoning specifications of the Ankara Master Plan, see Hermann
Jansen, Ankara Ili Imar Plani (Istanbul: Alaadin Kiral Matbaasi, 1937). Some of the
ideas in this plan were later suggested for implementation in other cities. (See 1580
Sayili Belediyeler Kanunu, Resmi Gazete, Apr. 3, 1930.)
4. Hermann Jansen had worked under Camillo Sitte in his formative
years. As a professor of architecture and urban design, he was most probably acquainted with the issues raised by the modernist vanguard in CIAM and innovative large-scale housing projects built in Germany at this time. In his own approach,
Jansen also promoted the extensive use of urban greenbelts and emphasized the
importance of sunlight and fresh air. His plans for Ankara demonstrate his interest
in making these resources accessible to all. Jansen differed from the visions of the
modernist vanguard in his ambivalent approach to industry and traffic and his reticence to make provisions for the expansion of either. The report that accompanied
his final revisions to the master plan also reveals that he envisioned Ankara as a town
of single or row houses and walk-up apartments. He was opposed to the kind of
residential density typical of high-rise apartments that he referred to as residential
barracks, clearly invoking the imagery of the Mietkaserne in Berlin at the turn of
the century. For further information, see also Gbniil Tankut, Bir Baskentin Imari:
Ankara, 1929-1939 (Ankara: Orta Dogu Teknik Oniversitesi, 1990).
5. From the report that accompanied the foundation charter of the Ankara
Master Planning Bureau (1351 Sayili Ankara Sehri Imar Miidiiriyeti Teskilat ve
Vazaifine Dair Kanun, Resmi Gazete, May 28, 1928).
The problem of forming an appropriate executive organization to build a
model capital in Ankara had been the agenda of the National Assembly since the
earliest days of the republic. Transcriptions of debates in the National Assembly
indicate that the shortcomings of the Ankara Municipality as the executive body had
been brought up as early as 1924. Although the foundation charter of the Ankara
Municipality was modeled on that of Istanbul, it completely eliminated citizen par-
ticipation. (See 417 Sayili Ankara Sehremanetinin Teskilat ve Vazaifine Dair Kanun,
Resmi Gazete, Feb. 16, 1924.) This was intended to be an expedient measure that
also gave the central government more control over local processes and the shaping
of the new city. However, government intervention, still couched in terms of local
government laws, was rather indirect. The lack of funds and autonomy slowed the
process of clearing land and building. Frustrated by the red tape that surrounded
these processes, the republican administrators established the Ankara Master Planning Bureau at about the time that the competition for the city's plan came to
completion in May 1928. The bureau, which became operational in fiscal year 1929,
was an autonomous state agency that overrode the authority of the city government
and responded directly and exclusively to the minister of the interior.
6. The expropriation of land from individuals also took place under very
restricted terms. Although some payment was made to property owners in affected
areas, in most cases appeals were not allowed. The first large-scale expropriation,
which affected four million square meters of urban land and took place in 1925,
did not leave any room for appeals but paid the original property owners a fair
amount of money (583 SayiliAnkara 'daInsaasi Mukarrer YeniMahalle ifin Muktezi
Yerleri ile Bataklik ve Merzagi Arazinin Sehremanetince Istimlakine Dair Kanun,
Resmi Gazete, Mar. 24, 1924). A few interesting anecdotes that demonstrate the
confusing situations that arose from expropiations that took place in marginal
neighborhoods are offered in Ibrahim Ogretmen's Ankara'da 158 Gecekondu (Ankara: Oniversitesi Siyasal Bilgiler Fakultesi Yayinlari, 1957).
What distinguished the cases of the Pious Foundations and the Treasury was
that rather than being governed by the regular expropriation laws, the expropriation
of these properties was explicitly written into the charter of the Bureau in its ninth
clause as a distinct kind of transaction. Moreover, although neither the foundations
nor the Treasury was paid in exchange for the seizure of its property, revenues that
were generated from the properties' resale or lease were funneled to the bureau to
use at its discretion. Eventually, this mode of expropriation was extended to all municipalities, entitling all cities to request property from the Pious Foundations at no
cost under the Municipalities Law (1580 Sayili Belediyeler Kanunu).
7. Nazif Oztiirk, Tiirk Yenilesme 7erfevesinde VakifMuiiessesi (Ankara:
Tiirkiye Diyanet Vakfi Yayinlari, 1995), pp. 136, 203, 427-29, 443-45.
8. Ekrem Ergiiven, Siikrii Kaya Sizleri ve Yazilari, 1927-1937 (Istanbul:
Cumhuriyet Matbaasi, 1937), pp. 193-94.
9. Vakif(pl. evkaf, vakifar) is an Arabic term that means "to seize and
bring to a standstill." More commonly, it is used to describe a general category of
institutions most closely translated into English as "pious foundations" or "endowments." Basically, vakifentails the setting aside of a revenue-generating property
(buildings or land) as an endowment to support some religious or charitable service for perpetuity. In theory, according to Islamic law, all assets of the vakifs are
immune to transfers of ownership that could be detrimental to their survival because, according to the shariya (religious law), they are sacrosanct and inalienable.
Taken out of the sphere of commercial transactions, they are in effect at a legal
standstill. For more information on vakifs, see John Robert Barnes, An Introduction
to Religious Foundations in the Ottoman Empire (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1986).
10. Ottoman sultans and state officials commonly founded several vakifs in
different cities to encourage urban development or to ensure the provision of various urban services. However, the practice was not limited to the ruling elite: Local
notables also established more modest vakifs in their own towns. Already by the
seventeenth century, there was a proliferation of different types of vakifs on Ottoman lands, classified according to size, type of endowment, title of the founder, and
so on. Vakifs were institutions with a dual character that were established by private initiative to serve public needs. For a brief discussion of the Ottoman imperial
18
system was the Turkish Civil Code that discontinued the vakifas an institution
(Tiirk Medeni Kanunu, Resmi Gazete, Oct. 4, 1926). The administration of all existing vakifalready established was given to the Vakif General Directorate, which
was directly accountable to the prime minister.
16. Among the most influential laws were 748 Sayili Mazbut Vakif
Tasinmazlarin Kamu Kuruluslari ve Menafi-i Umumiyeti Hadim Mfiesseselerine
vakifs, see Howard Crane, "The Ottoman Sultan's Mosques: Icons of Imperial Le-
gitimacy,"in TheOttomanCityand Its Parts:UrbanStructureand SocialOrder,ed.
I. Bierman, R. Abou El-Hajj, and D. Preziosi (New Rochelle, NY: A. D. Caratzas,
1991). In both An Introductionto ReligiousFoundationsin the OttomanEmpireand
his unpublished dissertation on the history of Ottoman vakifs, "Vakif Administration under the Ottoman Ministry of Imperial Religious Foundations, 1839 to
1875" (Ph.D. diss. University of California, Los Angeles, 1980), Barnes provides a
thorough history of the development and proliferation of this ubiquitous Ottoman
institution.
11. Halim Baki Kunter, "Tdrk Vakiflari ve Vakfiyeleri Izerine Macmel bir
Etiid," Vakiflar Dergisi No. 1 (Ankara: Vakiflar Umum Muidrliiga Nesriyati,
Ihalesiz Satislarina Dair Kanun, Resmi Gazete, Feb. 22, 1926; TiirkMedeni
Kanunu, Resmi Gazete, Oct. 4, 1926; and 2762 Sayili Vakijfar Kanunu, Resmi
Gazete, June 5, 1935).
17. F.G., "Sogukkuyu Ne Olacak?" p. 6.
18. Ekrem Ergiiven, Siikrii Kaya Siizleri ve Yazilari 1927-1937 (Istanbul:
1938): 105.
Cumhuriyet Matbaasi, 1937), pp. 132-33.
19. "Ruhsatsiz Binalar," Hakimiyeti Milliye, Oct. 18, 1929.
12. CumhuriyettenOnce ve Sonra Vakiflar: Tarih Kongresi ve Sergisi
20. F.G., "Sogukkuyu Ne Olacak?"p. 6.
MiinasebetileTurk TarihKurumunaTakdimOlunan Rapor(Istanbul:Vakiflar
21. Ibid.
Umum Midrliigii,
1937).
22. Fehmi Yavuz, Ankara'nin Imari ve Sehirciligimiz (Ankara: Ankara
13. ?elik Resit, VakiflarGenelMiidiirliigiindeki
KayitlaraGoreII. Mesrutiyet
DiinemindenCumhuriyetin
IlaninaKadarTesisEdilenEgitimve KiiltiirMiiesseseleri Oniversitesi Siyasal Bilgiler Fakiiltesi Yayinlari, 1952), p. 71.
23. Ergun Ozbudun, Social Changeand Political Participationin Turkey
(unpublished expertise thesis, Ankara: TC Basbakanlik Cumhuriyet Arsivi Daire
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), pp. 92, 205, 213.
Baskanligi, 1986), p. 12.
24. Ankara'nin Biiyiiyiisii, Hakimiyeti Milliye, Oct. 29, 1933; "Bayram
14. Nazif Ozturk, Tiirk Yenilesme(erfevesinde VakiffMiiessesi(Ankara:
Yolculari,"
Vakfi
66-75.
1995),
Hakimiyeti Milliye, Mar. 2, 1934; and Mehmed Kemal, Tiirkiye'nin
Diyanet
Yayinlari,
pp.
Tirkiye
KalbiAnkara (Istanbul: ?agdas Yayinlari, 1983), pp. 81-88.
15. The most important law that undermined the legal tenets of the vakif
19
Kezer
Forgetting the Smyrna Fire
by Biray Kolluo
glu Kırlı
We cannot help but think of fire as the element of annihilation. But both
mythographers and natural historians know better: that from the pyre
rises the phoenix, that through a mantle of ash can emerge a shoot of
restored life.
Simon Schama, 19951
What I see as I stand on the deck of the Iron Duke is an unbroken
wall of fire, two miles long in which twenty distinct volcanoes of raging
flames are throwing up jagged, writhing tongues to a height of a hundred
feet . . .
The sea glows a deep copper-red, and worst of all, from the densely
packed mob of many thousand refugees huddled on the narrow quay,
between the advancing fiery death behind and the deep water in front,
comes continuously frantic screaming of sheer terror as can be heard
miles away.
Daily Mail dispatch, 16 Sept. 19222
This was how the correspondent of the Daily Mail, watching from on board
a British destroyer in mid September 1922, described ‘the scene of appalling
and majestic destruction’ as he saw Smyrna burn. The Great Fire involved
the literal and symbolic destruction of this city, which from being an
unremarkable small town in the sixteenth century had experienced
spectacular growth and development to become in the nineteenth century
the most favoured port of the Eastern Mediterranean. Late Ottoman
Smyrna embraced a cosmopolitan population of over 200,000 in which the
demographic and economic dominance of the non-Muslim groups
significantly marked the city.3 It was known as ‘gavur (infidel) Izmir’ by
Muslims during the Ottoman period.4 It is more than likely that Smyrna
began to be called infidel not only because so many of its inhabitants were
non-Muslims, but also because of the dominance in the city’s economic and
socio-cultural life of the ‘Levantines’ or ‘Franks’5 – foreigners of European
origin – and the centrality and importance of their districts in its urban
geography.6 To this day, reference to ‘gavur Izmir’ finds resonance in
Turkish popular imaginary.
The city’s residential layout was organized around its communities.
Levantine, Greek, and Armenian quarters lay close to the bay in a triangle
formed by two railway lines and the sea. On the other side of the tracks
were the Jewish and Turkish quarters. The fire wiped out Smyrna’s ‘Frank’
District, commercially and culturally the centre of the city and home to the
History Workshop Journal Issue 60
doi:10.1093/hwj/dbi005
ß The Author 2005. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of History Workshop Journal, all rights reserved.
26
History Workshop Journal
Drawing of the fire at Smyrna based on a painting by Raffael Corsine.
27
majority of Levantine merchants. It also consumed the Armenian and
Greek quarters, which housed most residents from these communities. This
means that almost all non-Muslim neighbourhoods were destroyed (with
the exception of the Jewish quarter), along with three-quarters of this bustling
port city. Physical destruction of such dimensions is significant in and of
itself. In this article, however, I will concentrate on the symbolic destruction
of space and history that the Great Fire of 1922 signified. In the following
pages I will argue that symbolically the Great Fire was an act of punishment, a destruction aiming to purify, to chastise this ‘gavur’ (infidel) city.
At the same time, I argue, the destruction of the city through fire was an act
of creation, an attempt to build places of (counter) memory, opening up a
terrain upon which the new nation’s imprint, its Muslim and Turkish
identity, could be carved and its cosmopolitanism nationalized.
Smyrna burned to ashes at a time when the Ottoman Empire – with
its administrative, political, and economic structures and institutions, its
peoples, geography, and imagination – was being radically replaced by
nationalist counterparts in the Turkish Republic. This transition involved
the drawing of a new human and spatial geography. Extensive muslimization of Anatolia had already begun in the nineteenth century through forced
migration of the Muslims of the Balkans and Russia and took a new form
with the cleansing of Armenians undertaken by the Young Turks controlling the Ottoman government in 1915. The construction of a purely Muslim
and Turkish nation was an attempt to create a rupture between what
belonged to the Empire and what was imagined to belong to the nationstate.7 This involved not only the eradication of the synthetic imagination of
the Empire and the construction of a new national imaginary, but also the
eradication of Ottoman spaces and the creation of national spaces in their
stead. Although the significance of a developing imaginary that redefines
national territory as homeland and that of the territoriality of nationbuilding have been studied, analyses of the construction of collective
identities have largely obscured the reconfiguration of cityscapes as an
integral element in the creation of national imaginaries. I will argue that the
destruction of Ottoman spaces and the redefinition and reconstruction of
new cityscapes and public spaces were an integral part of the process of the
construction of Turkish nationalism in the 1920s.
These arguments will be based on an analysis of how the Great Fire was
reconstituted within official and collective memory, or a microanalysis of
the role of memory in nationalist modernism. Silences, omissions, and gaps
in the narration of the fire in Turkish historiography and collective memory
will be used as sources of information. In the following pages the ways
in which the fire is (not) remembered or (not) verbalized provide instances
of the workings of memory in the creation of a nationalist imaginary. The
process of nation-state formation involves drawing of spatial boundaries
and the remoulding of prior spatial orders. A significant aspect of the
reconfiguration of spatial matrices or construction of national spatialities
28
is the ‘privileging of certain places as . . . places of memory’.8 This is usually
understood as memorialization of symbolic sites (such as battlefields or
the site of the twin towers in New York), or of symbolic events and figures
through spatial inscriptions (monuments, war memorials). This article
will present the privileging of the fire zone in Izmir as a place of (counter)
memory.
My focus here is not the traumatic consequences of the fire as it translated into the devastation of lives, through death, loss, or the uprooting of
people from their homes. Rather, for our purposes what is significant is the
temporal and spatial break that the Great Fire represents. Its erasure from
official history and from collective memory translates as a new beginning for
the new nation as the fire’s destruction mediates the erasure of Ottoman
spaces. According to Ana Maria Alonso, ‘[t]he spatial, temporal, and bodily
matrices are conjoined in nationalism’.9 We can see the coalescence of these
matrices not only in the articulation of the Izmir Fire in collective memory,
but also in its role in the inscription of the nationalist blueprint on Ottoman
Izmir.
If memory is to be employed in social analysis in an intellectually
sustainable manner it needs to be posited as a relational concept.
Remembering is a process of framing the past with the guidance of past
and present social relations. Acts of remembering are always already acts
of forgetting; and memories are shaped within and in relation to material
objects and spatial frameworks. Memory is not an individual faculty,
despite its seemingly very personal dimensions. Individual remembrances
are made possible by the structures of collective memory. Hence
remembering/forgetting is a process of social construction.10 Yet, one
should be careful not to push this argument without qualifying it. The
notion of construction does not imply a vacuum in which an endless number
of pieces can be put together in infinitely varying possibilities. The truth may
remain in the eye of the beholder, but that gaze is located at a particular
moment in time-space and in relation to other gazes that again stand in a
certain structure of social relations. If collective remembering/forgetting
is an integral part of constructing national imaginaries, unravelling this
process is essential to uncovering the relationships that are constructed
and sustained through collective memory.
Fire marks the moment when the spatial and temporal continuity of
Smyrna/Izmir was broken, a moment of discontinuity. The process of a
concerted effort of collective forgetting is inextricably tied to the workings
of collective remembering. Paul Connerton keenly observes that periods of
radical transformations are periods of recollection as much as they are
periods of forgetting. Through a study of the workings of social memory
during the French Revolution he argues that ‘all beginnings contain an
element of recollection’ despite the fact that the moment of beginning marks
the ‘abolition of the sequence of temporality’. ‘But the absolutely new is
inconceivable,’ says Connerton, ‘in all modes of experience we always base
29
our particular experiences on a prior context in order to ensure that they are
intelligible at all.’11 These insights underline that collective memory during
radical transformations is in continuous dialogue with the time that is in
the process of becoming the past. Commenting on how nineteenth-century
European societies coped with the radical transformations that they were
experiencing Hutton writes ‘ironically, this society, self-conscious about the
new culture that it was creating, also needed a new past with which it might
identify’.12 We can think of this assessment as a more general commentary
on the state of breaking away from one order and establishing a new one.
Or, to go back to our departure point, this can be thought of as a
commentary on moments of discontinuity. National histories are built on
premises of continuity in the face of actual radical discontinuity. Hence
moments of rupture, like the Great Fire, are always already moments
lending themselves to reconstructions that mark a continuity. Alessandro
Cavalli calls these ‘crucial events’ and writes, ‘[t]hey mark a discontinuity,
and therefore require the reconstruction of a sense of continuity’. At such
moments because the discontinuity with the past is maximized, ‘the
crucial event performs the symbolic function of closing past accounts and
opening a new era’.13 The fire is forgotten for the new nation to construct its
narrative. ‘All profound changes in consciousness, by their very nature’,
writes Benedict Anderson, ‘bring with them characteristic amnesias. Out of
such oblivions, in specific historical circumstances, spring narratives.’14
Before we can begin to analyze an instance of collective amnesia in the
construction of Turkish nationalism, it is necessary to look briefly at this
historical event, the Great Fire. This will be followed by an analysis of the
ways in which the fire was absorbed into, or deleted from, official history
and collective memory. The last section is devoted to an analysis of the ways
in which the fire was absorbed into or deleted from official history and
collective memory.
THE GREAT FIRE
When the ashes settled in 1922, Smyrna, the glorious port-city of the
Ottoman empire had disappeared from the face of the earth.
With a horrific appropriateness, the fire expressed in symbolic terms
the rooting out and destruction of Greek and Armenian Smyrna. Hellenic
Smyrna was dead. Christian Smyrna, too, one of the great ancient foundations of Asia Minor, was dead. The phoenix to rise from these ashes
was a Turkish Izmir purged of two thousand and more years of history.15
Looking back at the period that carried Smyrna to its ‘death’, that is,
at the days immediately preceding the actual days of the catastrophe, will
give us clues to understand what the fire signifies. Let us look back at
what immediately preceded the fire.
30
Following the defeat of the Ottomans in the First World War, what was
left of the already shrunken territories of the Ottoman empire, that is mainly
Anatolia, was also slipping away. The Mudros armistice, 31 October 1918,
certified the unconditional surrender of the Ottoman state in this war
and after this an allied fleet anchored in Istanbul and an allied military
administration was set up there. French troops entered Cilicia and Adana in
Southern Anatolia and the Italians landed in Antalya, again in Southern
Anatolia, in early 1919. The Greek army under the cover of allied warships
set foot in Smyrna on 15 May 1919, occupied a large portion of the coastal
area and began a march towards the interior. On 19 May 1919, immediately
after the Greek army disembarked in Western Anatolia, Mustafa Kemal
Pasha landed in a Black Sea port, Samsun, under the orders of Istanbul
to disband the remaining Turkish forces in Anatolia. But he did just the
opposite and began to organize a nationalist resistance army against the
occupation of European powers and the Sultanate in Istanbul that had
accepted their terms. In August 1922 the Turkish nationalist resistance
forces launched a major counter-attack against an over-stretched Greek
army which by then had also lost the half-hearted support of the Allies.
The Turkish counter-attack proved catastrophic for both the Greek army
and the Anatolian Greeks. In the first week of September 1922, while the
army was retreating, the civilian Greek population was fleeing away from
the Turkish forces, flowing from the inland into Smyrna.
The first news from the eastern front reached Smyrna on 28 August in the
form of a brief communiqué announcing the evacuation of the Greek army
from Afyon Karahisar, a city approximately 200 miles east.16 Although
rumours of ‘disaster’ had begun to spread, it seems that they were not yet
effective at the level of upsetting the daily life of the city. A dispatch
published in the Manchester Guardian on 28 September 1922 reported:
Arriving at Smyrna on Tuesday morning, August 29th, we found it
bathed in sunshine and blissfully ignorant of the terrible fate overhanging
it and many of its people. The quays were thronged with Greek soldiers
and their officers, seamen, visitors, labourers and merchants, passing
one way or another in two endless streams . . . It was a scene of abounding life and vitality . . . Nightfall found all at their rest, recreation, or
refreshment, the open-air and indoor cafes, with their orchestras or
singers, all being busy and crowded, while the Opera House was filled
with an enthusiastic audience showing their appreciation of the artistic
efforts of an Italian opera company.17
It took only a few days for the imminence of radical change to be recognized.
The first week of September brought an influx of refugees and the remnants
of the Greek army into the city. Greek civilians and soldiers poured
into Smyrna from Aydin, Soke, Alasehir, Usak and other neighbouring
cities. Driving towards Manisa (a city towards the East of Izmir), the
31
Daily Telegraph correspondent observed that ‘refugees and erstwhile
fighting men were travelling in any sort of conveyance that came to hand.
Wagons, carts, donkeys, mules, camels, and even prehistoric woodenwheeled bullock carts were pressed into service . . . The confusion was
indescribable’.18
While the soldiers were headed towards Cesme, a smaller port across
the island of Chios which served as the disembarkation point of the Greek
army, the refugees were camping on Smyrna’s quay and the streets leading
to it. The first to leave the city were the foreign nationals. The consulates
in the city began transferring their nationals to the Greek islands and to
Athens in the first week of September.19 ‘[T]he quays were packed with
people waiting to get their passports or pass their baggage through the
Customs, and the congestion grew so great that these regulations were
abandoned altogether.’20 The city was in a state of chaos. While the
‘terrifying inflow of refugees, deserters, and exhausted troops’ overwhelmed
the city, the Greek inhabitants of Izmir were also trying to get on to
ships, abandoning their shops, houses, and property.21
There are no reliable figures for the number of refugee arrivals or for
the population of the city in 1922. Journalistic estimations frequently agree
on 50,000 refugees. According to United States official sources, there were
around 150,000 refugees in the city during the first week of September
and this number rose to 300,000 as of 13 September.22 We also have
no reliable figures for casualties during the fire, or for the killings that
took place after the Turkish army came into the city, though to make an
educated guess at this we can use the number of people who survived
to leave the city. Harry Powell, commander of the USS destroyer Esdall,
reported to Admiral Mark L. Bristol, US High Commissioner to the
Ottoman Empire, that by 1 October a total of 213,480 refugees from Smyrna
had been transferred to Athens, Salonika, Mytilene, Chios, and Samos.
While 21,000 of these were British, French, and Italian nationals, the
majority were Greeks. Taking into consideration that the 231,480 figure
in all likelihood includes those who were hiding in the villages surrounding
Izmir and who flocked to the city only after the Turkish army’s deadline
for the evacuation was set for 30 September,23 and that it also reflects the
non-Muslims who managed to flee, we can estimate that the casualties were
no less than 100,000.
In the chaotic first week of September 1922 fire became a dangerous
possibility. During the army’s march towards Izmir many small towns and
villages in Western Anatolia were set on fire. While Admiral Bristol was
reporting to the US State Department that the deserting Greek Army could
burn the city down,24 the Turkish army’s entrance to the city was also
alarming Smyrna’s non-Muslim inhabitants. In other words, there were
various rumours everywhere in the city that the Turks, the Armenians, or the
Greeks were preparing to burn the city down: the identity of the possible
arsonist group varied from community to community.
32
The Turkish nationalist forces marched into Smyrna on 9 September.
Paul Prentiss, a member of the Near East Relief committee, reported to the
American Admiral Bristol that in the first week of September there was an
average of five fires per day in Izmir. The report, mainly based on the
account of the chief of Smyrna Fire Department Paul Gerscovich, said that
this number far exceeded the average number of fires in a normal year which
was about one in ten days. The fires reported between 10 and 12 September
were so numerous and at such widely-separated points that the fire
department was rendered helpless. It must be added that the small
department had already been crippled by the arrests of its twelve Greek
employees upon the orders of the Turkish military. During this ill-fated week
there were only thirty-seven fire fighters in the whole city.25
Towards noon on Wednesday 13 September at least six fires were
reported simultaneously around the freight terminal warehouses and the
passenger station of the Aydin Railroad. Around noon five more fires were
reported around the Armenian hospital, two at the American club and
several around the Kasaba railroad station. Additionally the wind started
to blow from the south-east and drove the flames towards the Frank and
Greek quarters.26 These disparate fires, originating in different spots in this
part of the city, eventually turned into a single conflagration.
As the fire was engulfing a larger area the refugees and those inhabitants
of the Armenian, Greek, and Frank districts who had not already fled to the
suburbs were swept towards the waterfront, where thousands of people were
packed on the quay. Let us again listen to one of the observers on one of
the British warships:
It was a terrifying thing to see even from the distance. There was the most
awful scream one could ever imagine. I believe many people were shoved
into the sea, simply by the crowds nearest the houses trying to get further
away from the fire . . . Many did undoubtedly jump into the sea, from
sheer panic.27
The fire continued to burn with all its might for two days and when it finally
burned itself out on 15 September the flames had consumed three quarters
of the city (excluding its suburbs), including the Armenian, Greek, and
Frank districts. It is estimated that some twenty to twenty-five thousand
houses, stores, and shops were burned including post offices, consulates,
big department stores, major hotels, theatres, and clubs. The fire stretched
3,200 metres along the shoreline and it penetrated 5,000 metres inland.28
SILENCE SPEAKS
The fire is consigned to the margins in the writings of noted British and
American scholars in Ottoman-Turkish studies. Bernard Lewis and Richard
Robinson do not mention it at all, while Stanford Shaw rejects the
33
suggestions in the western press regarding Turkish responsibility for the fire
but does not discuss how it happened.29 In contrast, Armenian and Greek
historians base their arguments that the Turkish army started the fire on
a book by the American Consul George Horton whose anti-Turkish bias
is crudely explicit.30 The other book routinely cited on the city in this
catastrophic period is Marjorie Housepian’s Smyrna, a study based largely
on the sources utilized by Horton.31
Debates regarding the responsibility for the Izmir debacle hold a
particularly sensitive place in the memory of the peoples of both Turkey
and Greece. Turkish official history, propagated through high-school
history textbooks and both television and radio programmes broadcast on
the significant days of republican history, preaches that the city was burnt
by the Greeks and Armenians in a final attempt to destroy what they were
leaving behind. The Greek accounts place the responsibility on the ‘vicious’
and ‘barbarian’ Turks. All accounts find, or better yet, fabricate evidence
to support their ardently-argued positions.
Relying on the existing sources it is possible to make a case for either
Greek or Turkish complicity in the burning of the city. One can argue that
the Prentiss report is a testimony to the innocence of the Turkish soldiers
and people and point towards the barbarism of the Greeks; or alternatively
use Horton and Housepian to make just as clear a case for the victimization
of the Greeks and Armenians. In such cases as these one can fortunately call
upon the wisdom of Hannah Arendt, who noted that ‘facts and events are
infinitely more fragile than axioms, discoveries, theories’ because they are
constantly changing.32 It is not my intention here to join the debate since
this would involve subscribing to its nationalist contours. My concern is
with the role of this fire in national histories and the processes of its
digestion into national narratives.
In this context, since the existing scholarship is both very thin and biased,
and the sources are scanty and mostly unreliable, I suggest that it is worth
considering this historical instance, not necessarily from the perspective of
the documents and sources, but from the perspective of social and cultural
ramifications or by evaluating its discursive aftermath. Put differently, the
way in which the fire was articulated into or disarticulated from Turkish
history and collective memory can provide us with the background to assess
the journalistic sources, memoirs, and oral accounts on the fire. These
resources lend themselves to interpretation only after they are discursively
embedded. Analysis of this kind of has the potential to transcend the pitfalls
of nationalist debates and pose the Great Fire as a moment of rupture in the
construction of Turkish nationalism.
The Great Chicago Fire of 1871, comparable in proportions and in the
devastation that it caused, led both eyewitnesses and later observers to
believe that the calamity was ‘utterly incapable of verbal representation’.
Yet this perception rather than leading ‘into a silence by the realization that
no words could describe the fire experience’ produced quite the opposite
34
result of ‘a massive literary, journalistic and personal outpouring’.33 The
Great Fire in Smyrna, however, produced in Turkey a vast silence within
which the few voices to verbalize the catastrophe were swallowed. So scarce
are the accounts, whether scholarly, literary, or popular, that the Great Fire
seems to have burnt away all traces, even from collective memory. Although
the catastrophe and its aftermath would provide rich material that could
with great ease lend itself to artistic imagination, not a single Turkish novel,
film, or memoir deals with it. And again, though multiple social and
economic dimensions of this historical instance call for exploration there is
not a single scholarly study of it.
In the absence of scholarly, literary, or artistic sources to analyse the
Great Fire one viable intellectual trajectory is to find ways of listening to
the silence. Minkley and Legassick suggest that ‘history is constituted
through mechanisms of ‘‘not telling’’ as it is by ways of telling’.34 We can
deduce information and learn from listening to silence just as we can from
listening to words.
The silence begins in official accounts and official history. Firstly and
also perhaps most importantly, Mustafa Kemal did not mention the Izmir
fire in his historically significant speech to the Assembly on 4 November
1922. This was his first appearance before the Assembly after the nationalist
victory and in this speech he described in detail the events and the battles of
late August and early September. Nor was the Izmir fire included in his
six-day speech in 1927.35 The elimination of the fire from these speeches,
which can be seen as labour pains preceding the birth of official memories of
the new nation, prepared the ground for wiping this episode out of its
history. To recapitulate, in these speeches Mustafa Kemal, the ‘father of the
nation’, sketched the outline of the history of the ‘war of liberation’ before
the National Assembly and thus before the nation. These sources form
the basis of the sub-field of history in Turkey known as ‘The History of the
Turkish Revolution’. ‘History of the Turkish Revolution’ courses are
compulsory in high schools and universities and there are institutes of the
same name in various universities. Ataturk’s historical outline did not
include the almost total destruction of the second most important city of
the new nation. This is how he referred to the fire in a speech during his visit
to Izmir in 1923:
Izmir was in flames and smoke. Everyone was sombre before this sad
scene. They had tears in their eyes. However, upon brief inquiry I realized
that these tears were not because of the fire and the devastation. This fire
and this devastation did not have any influence on them . . . , their eyes
were filled with tears from happiness because of witnessing our victorious
army liberating them.36
In this quotation fire does come into the picture, yet barely, and it still
escapes description. Perhaps it was too difficult to ignore it altogether while
35
the scars on the face of the city after only a year were still so visible. Yet it is
articulated in such a way that it becomes the symbol of liberation rather
than of destruction, gain rather than loss, joy rather than mourning.
Izmirians are told that this event should not have ‘any influence’ on them
other than to remind them of what it brought them, that is ‘liberation.
In most memoirs on the Turkish national war ‘Izmir’s liberation’, which
holds an important place in popular consciousness and the historiography
of the Turkish Revolution, is recounted in great detail. It was in Izmir that
actual fighting came to an end and the victory of the nationalist resistance
was crowned. Hence it is telling to see that while the entrance of the Turkish
army into the city and the ensuing days are recounted in great detail, the fire
itself is either passed over in one sentence or not mentioned at all.37 Most
Turkish academic accounts of the ‘war of liberation’, fully consonant with
the official account, tell us how the Greeks (sometimes with the help of the
Armenians) burned down a city which they did not want to leave behind.38
It is also important to observe the style and the tone of the Turkish sources.
Foreign journalistic accounts, of which we have read examples in the
preceding pages, reflect the awe, sympathy, and pain of the commentators,
implying some form of personal engagement before the catastrophic event
that they witnessed. Time and again the human suffering is described
in arresting detail – not at all surprising given the gigantic scale of the
devastation. However, in Turkish sources not only is the human element
completely absent but there is also a sense of distance, a sense of alienation.
What is being discussed is no longer the city which became the stage for the
glorious event of the final defeat of the Greek army, but a reified landscape.
Izmir becomes a city devoid of its inhabitants and the reader is offered a
neutralized description of the material damage, boosted by enumeration of
the buildings and shops lost to the fire.39
This process of removing the fire from history undoubtedly targets the
ways in which ordinary people remember/forget this catastrophic experience. As Alonso observes it, collective memory cannot be sustained
‘in pristine isolation from official constructions of the past’.40 Oral accounts
of the fire from elderly Izmirians testify to the power of the ‘sheltered
pathways’ elaborated by Halbwachs in shaping collective remembrances.41
At this point I will offer instances of this collective memory based on oral
interviews. The interviews that I draw upon in the following pages were
conducted in the second half of 1998 and first half of 1999. These were openended interviews in which I asked questions not only about the fire, but also
other aspects of early twentieth-century Izmir. For purposes of anonymity
I use pseudonyms.
The majority of the Izmirians whom I interviewed and who had witnessed
the burning of their city as children, told me right away that the Greeks
and/or Armenians set it on fire as they were escaping because they did not
want to leave it to the Turks. It was interesting to observe that in the
memories of these interviewees the order of events was reversed. In response
36
to my question ‘whether they had heard any arguments about reports of the
fire being started by the Turkish troops’ they were saying that this was not
possible because the army came after the fire. I must add that this reordering
of the events is not exclusive to the elderly Izmirians who survived the
Anatolian War. In the various settings where I have offered these
observations, audiences from Turkey were taken aback by the actual
chronology of the events. This reversal in collective memory is critical
especially in the face of the fact that there is no such reversal in official
history.
Such reversal is not uncommon. Alessandro Portelli discusses similar
cases in Italian history, as for instance the death of Luigi Trastulli, a steelworker in Terni, Italy. He was killed in an anti-NATO demonstration
riot there in 1949, but was subsequently mythologized and remembered
as being killed in 1953 in the resistance against a massive laying-off of
steel workers.42 A similar case, discussed by Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi,
concerns memories of Mussolini’s march on Rome in 1922. While the
fascists were waiting at the outskirts of Rome and surrounding cities in late
October of 1922 to march into Rome Mussolini was summoned to Rome by
the Italian King, where on 30 March 1923 he was legitimately and peacefully
proclaimed Prime Minister. It was only the next day that the black-shirts
paraded before the King and the new prime minister. In the ensuing years,
however, this accession to power became known as ‘the events of late
October’ and the ‘revolutionary march of the fascists’.43
The reversal in the chronology of the events in the oral accounts of the
Izmir fire is thus critical. With this the heroic stories of ‘Izmir’s liberation’
are solidified by their imagining an army which marches into a city on fire,
the conflagration set with rage and barbarism, and which saves the city from
the enemy. No matter how the questions were formulated, most interviewees
did not recall any particular concrete moment regarding the fire. Yet in
almost all cases, they would readily tell how they remembered carts full of
dead bodies being carried, the blood on the streets, their parents offering
help to some neighbour in those days of chaos, or even accounts of
themselves murdering other people. In other words, it was not that these
people did not remember those eventful days during which they were young
witnesses of war, rather there seemed to be a gap in their memories
concerning the fire. The unreliability of the oral sources here gives them a
unique power: as Portelli observes, ‘errors, inventions, and myths [in the
oral accounts] lead us through and beyond facts to their meanings’.44
One of the few exceptions was a Levantine woman who was around
seven years old at the time of the eventful September of Smyrna. As soon as
I asked her if she remembered the burning of the city, she jumped from
her chair and hastened to the other end of the living-room, picking up an
ornamental porcelain pitcher which sat on an end table at the corner. She
brought it back with her and with a smile on her face said, ‘this is what is
left. My mother took only this from our house and said that we could use it
37
to drink water’. Their house was located in the Frank district and was
completely burnt down. She continued to tell me in detail the story of their
escape: how they had dressed wearing several layers of clothing on top of
each other, how a Turkish officer carried them on his horse to the station
where they boarded the train that took them to safety in Bornova, a nearby
suburb. She was quite moved and ended by saying, ‘I can still smell it. I can
still recall the smell of burned and dead bodies’.45
In another instance I was interviewing Orhan Bey, who was an architect
in Izmir municipality, about details of the post-fire reconstruction during
the 1940s and 1950s. His seventy-six year old wife was there listening. At
some point Orhan Bey mentioned that his wife’s father was one of the first
Muslim pharmacists in Izmir at the turn of the century. I asked her whether
she remembered her parents or other elders talking about the war and the
fire. After a short pause she told me, ‘now that you ask this I realize that
they never talked about it’. The interesting thing was her own astonishment in her realization. Twice she came back to that question as I was
continuing my interview with her husband which was wandering in different
directions. Finally after a while, without being asked, she said, ‘you asked
whether the fire was talked about at home. They never talked about it. I do
not remember anything. But, they used to talk about the violence of the
Greek soldiers. I remember this very clearly’. Then she went on to relate her
mother’s stories of how she had witnessed Greek soldiers killing innocent
women and the Turkish army entering the city.46
Two interviewees were substantially different from the others. In both
cases their reactions were similar when I began to ask questions about the
fire. In both cases, voices were lowered and body gestures implied a movement closer to my ear and, in one case, away from the tape-recorder.
Mehmet Bey, son of a wealthy landowner in Bornova, and Salih Bey, son of
a landowner from a village at the opposite end of the city, both asked me if
the recorder was still on when we began to talk about the fire and the exodus
of Greeks from the city. In both cases I said that I preferred to tape the
conversation and that the recorder was turned on. Neither asked for it to be
turned off. It was as if they were going to talk about some secret that they
had been keeping to themselves and were having difficulty in getting it out.
However, they wanted to do it anyway. Mehmet Bey told me that the
Turkish troops started the fires to clamp down on continuing resistance in
the Armenian and Greek neighbourhoods: ‘They [Greeks and Armenians]
were armed and still hiding in the houses in these narrow streets.’ He added,
‘but I think the real reason was to prevent them from coming back’.47 Salih
Bey also told me that it was the Turkish troops who burned the city and
explained it the following way: ‘We did not want them to come back; and
their shops and houses burnt down where were they going to return to?’48
I came across an obscure book written to mark the fiftieth anniversary
of the founding of the Republic. It was made up of around sixty interviews
with Anatolian war veterans. The editors tell us that they have published the
38
transcribed accounts without editing them and the language of the accounts
testifies to truth of this claim. As can be expected they are mostly stories of
heroism regarding the war. Yet the testimony of the following veteran is
very interesting:
Whatever, I forget the day, we entered Izmir. From the barracks square
until Alsancak, all that seaside [is] full of gavur carcasses.49 Our soldiers
have killed them all with bayonets. There were seven fleets across
Pasaport.50 English, French, Greek fleets. All the Greek gavur are
throwing themselves into the sea. They are yelling ‘help’. Even the fleets
couldn’t save them. The place of the Fair was a Frank cemetery. The
Armenians and the gavurs didn’t give up their houses. The irregulars
burnt all those houses. Bombs were exploding, rifles were fired. Most of
the gavurs and Armenians burned alive.51
This former soldier clearly states that the fires were started to force the gavur
inhabitants of the city from their houses. For him the burning of the city is
not important. The act itself is normalized. What matters is that the enemy
was forced out and destroyed.
Nineteenth and early twentieth-century Izmir, a cosmopolitan port city,
could have no place in the new nation being created under the slogan:
‘Turkey belongs to Turks’.52 The old Izmir belonged to Levantines, Greeks,
Armenians, Jews, and Muslims. For it to gain a Turkish identity it had to be
purified. The interviewees who had had a glimpse of that former city
remembered this. When it was time to talk about what had been forgotten
they started to act as if they did not want to hear the words they were about
to utter. Even today voices have to be lowered and bodies need to move
closer precisely because nationalism comes with an active process of forgetting and selective remembering; remembering what was supposed to be
forgotten brings about one of the most significant challenges against
nationalistic sentiments.
Falih Rifki Atay, a prominent journalist and author who witnessed the
fire provides us with a rare instance of talking openly on it. His account is
very different from the accounts of the fire in most Turkish sources and
hence deserves close attention. He writes:
It was the day of the Great Fire. As the flames were devouring the
neighbourhoods people were running towards the quay . . . Some were
jumping into the sea to hang on to small boats . . . I was watching this
unique tragedy with my heart aching . . . Izmir was burning and along
with its Greekness (Rumluk), the peoples of the first civilizations, the
ones who passed the Middle Ages with the Muslims, those who were
living in their homelands and homes in comfort, those who held up
Izmir’s and all of Western Anatolia’s agriculture, trade, and the entirety
of its economy, those who used to live in palaces, konaks, and çiftliks,
39
now, at the twenty-second year of the twentieth century were dying for
a piece of boat to take them away for good.53
This account is rare because it gives us a picture of the fire which includes
people. Atay underlines the human suffering, instead of just writing about
the destruction of the built environment. Diverging from the discursive
patterns of the Turkish sources that we have seen above, he talks about what
the fire represents: the destruction of not only the landscape but also the
city’s humanscape and history. He continues by tacitly acknowledging
the Turkish responsibility for the calamity while offering his explanation
for the burning of the city.
Gavur [infidel] Izmir burned and came to an end with its flames in the
darkness and its smoke in daylight. Were those responsible for the fire
really the Armenian arsonists as we were told in those days? . . . As I have
decided to write the truth as far as I know I want to quote a page from
the notes I took in those days. ‘The plunderers helped spread the fire . . .
Why were we burning down Izmir? Were we afraid that if waterfront
konaks, hotels and taverns stayed in place, we would never be able to
get rid of the minorities? When the Armenians were being deported in the
First World War, we had burned down all the habitable districts and
neighbourhoods in Anatolian towns and cities with this very same fear.
This does not solely derive from an urge for destruction. There is also
some feeling of inferiority in it. It was as if anywhere that resembled
Europe was destined to remain Christian and foreign and to be denied
to us.54
This brief ‘confession’ touches the heart of the issue. Here I will venture
to engage in a substitutive reading of Franz Fanon, applying his thoughts
on decolonization to nation-building on the ruins of an Empire. Although
in the Turkish case there was no colonizer against whom rage and violence
could be justifiably channelled, the creation of the new nation reflected the
will to create a tabula rasa – ‘(w)ithout any period of transition, a total,
complete, and absolute substitution’55 of what belonged to the Empire
with what was imagined as belonging to the nation. In a post-colonial
context the colonized peoples needed to wipe out the traces of their
colonizers. In the post-imperial context of the newly-founded Turkish
nation, the nationalists needed to wipe out what belonged to the
Ottomans. The social and spatial geography of the Ottoman Empire had
to be remade and remapped for the construction of Turkish nationalism
and the formation of the Turkish nation-state. This remaking and
remapping involved a process of erasure, and in most cases of the
complete elimination of the peoples and spaces of the Ottomans. The
eradication was both literally and symbolically violent. By burning Izmir
the nationalists were chastising infidel Izmir. Flames devoured the
40
cosmopolitan, hence decadent, impure culture of the city. When the black
clouds cleared, Izmir had undergone a moral improvement; it was purified.
As Atay observes in the above quotation: destroying the glamorous seaside
mansions, hotels, clubs, and cafés of the Frank district – that is, what
defined the Ottoman port city – did ‘not solely derive from an urge for
destruction’. It was, at the same time, an act of purification, an act of
creation.
Let me finally draw upon a book on Izmir written in 1939 to illustrate
my argument. This is a kind of travel guide, penned by a Turkish author
who visits the Republic’s Izmir after a break of almost twenty years.
He begins by telling us about the first time he visited Izmir, at the turn
of the century. During this visit, as he was approaching the city, he
eavesdropped on a conversation and overheard someone extolling the
beauties of Izmir with the words, ‘every place in Izmir is like foreign lands.
It is as if we are going to Marseilles’. This made a great impression on our
author, who recalls thinking: ‘Going to a foreign land. How thrilling’.56
Then he begins to describe what Izmir looked like at the turn of the
century. His account is strikingly different from other nineteenth-century
travellers’ accounts which, almost without exception, underline the beauty
of the city. The famous Frank district becomes in our guide’s words a very
dim, crowded, chaotic and ugly place: ‘If it were possible for you to
visualize the Frank district in its older form you would find it ridiculous’.
When finally he finishes his account of what a hilariously ugly city Izmir
used to be he says: ‘When the black clouds on Izmir opened up, the city
found its quay and hinterland in ruins and emptiness . . . Today’s Izmir
begins after this.’57
He begins his account of the city under the Turkish Republic by telling us
that ‘it is now as if we are entering a European city’ and continues to draw a
picture of an orderly, clean, well cared-for city:
The old does not exist. Moreover, one does not miss it. Here, there was
Posidon. There, there was Kramer, Klanaridi . . . But, I do not even want
to think about them. Now in their place I see our Atatürk’s statue on his
rearing horse. This monument alone is enough to explain to us that those
former buildings were only rubbish . . . I want to apologize to you, the
charming people of this beautiful city, that I made you remember these
bitter memories.58
Our guide is trying hard to forget what old Izmir was like and yet still
is haunted by it. When images and remembrances of the former city creep
in he becomes apologetic because he is invoking his readers’ memories of the
fire and what stood there before it. Let me also underline that he manages to
tell his story without talking about or even mentioning the fire. ‘The black
clouds’ imply both the smoke of the fire and the misfortunes of the city
‘before it was saved’.
41
CONCLUSION
In this article I have tried to establish that the key piece for solving the
historical puzzle of the Izmir Fire, the thread that ties the scattered evidence
that we encounter, is silence. The silence as to the Great Fire, official and
popular, speaks to a societal amnesia. Amnesia and amnesty are derived
from the same root in Greek, mnesthai – to remember. Amnesty is defined
as ‘an act of oblivion, a general pardon of offenses against a government;
a deliberate overlooking, as of an offense’.59 Hence, amnesia also implies an
act of pardoning. Michael Kammen argues that ‘memory is more likely to
be activated by contestation, and amnesia is more likely to be induced by the
desire for reconciliation’.60 The way in which fire is deliberately overlooked
implies the presence of an offence, a violence, and the concerted effort spent
to forget it speaks to an attempt of amnesty and reconciliation. Yet, the
violence or offence that is invoked here, as I suggested at the very beginning,
is not necessarily the violence against the non-Muslims who were burned,
drowned, or otherwise killed in mid September 1922. It is the violence
against the city, the chastising of Smyrna. The fire mediates the taming of its
‘foreignness’. It is also a violence against time: the violation of its continuity.
It is the violence executed through the disruption of its flow by the abrupt
transformation of the present into a distant past: the rupture that is caused
by the discontinuity between present and future.
The act of forgetting speaks to the presence of the former city. The
gestures of the interviewees, the way in which the flow of events is reversed,
the apologies of our traveller for invoking images of the former city, and the
occasional confessions all speak of the strength of the collective amnesia.
This amnesia marks the beginning of a national narrative.
NOTES AND REFERENCES
Biray Kolluoglu Kırlı is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Bogazici University, Istanbul. She
completed her Ph.D. in sociology at the State University of New York at Binghamton in 2001.
Analysing nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century Izmir, her dissertation examined the
material and symbolic reconfiguration of urban spaces and population structure in the process
of the transition from the Ottoman Empire to the Turkish nation-state. Kolluoglu Kırlı was a
post-doctoral Fellow at Wissenschaftskolleg, Berlin, in 2003–4. Her research areas include
nationalism, sociology of space and memory, political economy and the history of
Mediterranean port cities.
1 Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory, New York, 1995, p. 19.
2 Daily Mail dispatch, 16 Sept. 1922, reprinted in Lysimachos Œcenomos, The Martydom
of Smyrna and Eastern Christendom, London, 1922, pp. 70–1.
3 In 1890 the population of the city of Smyrna, including its suburbs, was 229,615,
according to Vital Cuinet, La Turquie d’Asie, ge´ographie administrative statisque descriptive et
raisonne´e de chaque province de l’Asie Mineure, vol. 3, Paris, 1894, p. 439. At the end of the
nineteenth century, non-Muslims comprised 61.5 per cent of the city’s total population: Justin
McCarthy, The Arab World, Turkey and the Balkans (1878–1914): a Handbook of Historical
Statistics, Boston, 1983, p. 142.
4 See the chapter on ‘Infidel Smyrna’ in Alexander William Kinglake, Eothen, London,
(1908) 1911, pp. 38–47. Smyrna and Izmir were both names for the city during the Ottoman
42
Empire. While the Europeans used Smyrna, in official Ottoman documents the city was called
Izmir. Smyrna was also used among the Ottoman Greeks and Levantines. Under the Republic
the usage of Smyrna completely disappeared. In this article I refer to the Ottoman city as
Smyrna and the Republican city as Izmir, to emphasize the rupture.
5 Levantines or Franks were foreign nationals of European origin, regardless of
their nationality, which might be Dutch, English, Italian, German, Austrian or French.
The French consulate in Izmir was established in 1619. By 1630 the Levant Company began
to dominate Ottoman markets and it was at this time that English consuls settled in
Izmir. In the 1620s the Dutch, and Venetians followed the French and the English. The
European presence began to be more salient in the city towards the end of the seventeenth
century.
6 Within the Ottoman domain, gavur was used predominantly if not exclusively for nonMuslims who were not Ottoman subjects. Various terms described non-Muslims in the Empire.
Most common of these is zimmi, a legal category comprising Orthodox Greeks, Armenians,
Jews, and other non-Muslim Ottoman subjects. This being the official definition zimmi more
specifically refers to Christian subjects. Reaya, another category, officially meant taxpayers,
but came to be used almost exclusively for non-Muslims by the nineteenth century. Gavur, kafir
(plural kefere), that is infidel, was not an official category and most often conveyed a pejorative
connotation for the subject group referred to.
7 Turkey’s secularism captures the imagination of West European and North American
scholars and politicians alike as a singular experiment in establishing a decidedly secular regime
in the Muslim world. This emphasis on the secular character of the Turkish Republic conceals
the early stages of the construction of Turkish nationalism during which the Republican state
was actively engaged in the project of reshaping the population within its territories by
eliminating the non-Muslims who began to be considered as ‘excesses’ (c.f. Arendt) in the
spatial and discursive matrices of the nation-state. The most striking instance of this in the post
World War I era is furnished by the 1923 Lausanne Convention Concerning the Exchange of
Greek and Turkish Populations, which resulted in the forced uprooting of some two million
Greek Orthodox and Muslim people. The process of accommodating and assimilating those
exchanged played a significant role in shaping the modalities of Turkish nationalism by creating
new lines and fissures which further divided the ‘Muslim brethren’ into ever more restrictive
constructions of Turkishness. (See Biray Kırlı, ‘From Ottoman Empire to Turkish NationState: Reconfiguring Spaces and Geo-bodies’, Unpublished Dissertation, 2002, Binghamton
University, New York.)
8 The Power of Place: Bringing Together Geographical and Sociological Imagination,
ed. John A. Agnew and James S. Duncan, Boston, 1989, p. 3.
9 Ana Maria Alonso, ‘The Politics of Space, Time, and Substance: State Formation,
Nationalism, and Ethnicity’, Annual Review of Anthropology 23, 1994, p. 387.
10 John Urry, ‘How Societies Remember the Past’, in Theorizing Museums, ed. Sharon
Macdonald and Gordon Fyfe, Cambridge, 1996, p. 50.
11 Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember, Cambridge, 1989, pp. 4, 6.
12 Patrick H. Hutton, History as an Art of Memory, p. 5.
13 Alessandro Cavalli, ‘Patterns of Collective Memory’, discussion paper No. 14, presented
at Collegium Budapest, June 1995, pp. 2, 4.
14 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of
Nationalism, London, 1991, p. 204.
15 Michael Llewellyn Smith, Ionian Vision: Greece in Asia Minor (1919–1922), London,
1973, p. 311.
16 Smith, Ionian Vision, p. 299.
17 Œcenomos, Martydom of Smyrna, pp. 54–5.
18 Daily Telegraph dispatch, 12 Sept. 1922, in Œcenomos, Martydom of Smyrna, p. 56.
19 Marjorie Housepian, Smyrna 1922: the Destruction of a City, London, 1972, p. 113.
20 Manchester Guardian dispatch, 28 Sept. 1922, in Œcenomos, Martydom of Smyrna,
pp. 54–5.
21 Morning Post dispatch, 15 Sept. 1922, in Martydom of Smyrna, pp. 56–7.
22 Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, Government Printing
Office, Washington D.C., 1922, pp. 418–20. Robert L. Daniel writes, basing his findings on
United States Government documents, that there were 260,000 homeless refugees in the city on
the evening of 13 September 1922, mostly Greeks: American Philanthropy in the Near East,
1820–1960, Athens, Ohio, 1970, p. 166.
43
23 Dimitra M. Giannuli, ‘American Philanthropy in the Near East: Relief to the Ottoman
Greek Refugees, 1922–1923’, Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, Kent State University, 1992,
pp. 131, 130.
24 Giannuli, ‘American Philanthropy in the Near East’, p. 106.
25 The Prentiss report was initially given to me by one of my interviewees in Izmir.
The entire document is printed in Heath W. Lowry, ‘Turkish History: On Whose Sources
Will It Be Based? A Case Study on the Burning of Izmir’, Osmanli Arastirmalari – The Journal
of Ottoman Studies 9, 1989, pp. 1–29, and referenced as Library of Congress, Bristol, General
Correspondence, Container # 38 (November–December, 1922 & January–February, 1923),
A Letter from Mark O. Prentiss to Admiral Mark Bristol dated 11 January, p. 23.
26 Prentiss Report.
27 Smith, Ionian Vision, p. 309.
28 Turkmen Parlak, Isgalden Kurtulusa 2: Yunan Ege’den Nasil Gitti, Son Gunler, Izmir,
1983, pp. 478–9.
29 See Bernard Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, London, 1968; Stanford Shaw
and Ezel Kural Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, Vol.2: Reform
Revolution, and Republic: the Rise of Modern Turkey, 1808–1975, Cambridge, 1977; Richard D.
Robinson, The First Turkish Republic: a Case Study in National Development, Cambridge, 1963.
Lord Kinross devotes a chapter to the Izmir fire in his book and argues that it was caused
accidentally. Lord Kinross, Ataturk, a Bibliography of Mustafa Kemal, Father of Modern
Turkey, New York, 1965.
30 George Horton, The Blight of Asia: an Account of the Systematic Extermination of
Christian Populations by Mohammedans and of the Culpability of Certain Great Powers; with the
True Story of the Burning of Smyrna, Indianapolis, 1926.
31 Housepian, Smyrna 1922.
32 Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: a Report on the Banality of Evil, New York, 1965.
33 Carl Smith, Urban Disorder and the Shape of Belief: the Great Chicago Fire, the
Haymarket Bomb, and the Model Town of Pullman, Chicago, 1995, pp. 26–7.
34 Gary Minkley and Martin Legassick, ‘‘‘Not Telling’’: Secrecy, Lies, and History’,
History and Theory 39: 4, December 2000, pp. 1–11. See also the other articles in this special
issue, particularly Luise White, ‘Telling More: Lies, Secrets, and History’, pp. 11–23, which is
devoted to role of silences and distortions in the construction of historical narratives and
how these, in themselves are sources of information.
35 See Ataturk’un Soylev ve Demecleri, vol. 1, Ankara, 1989, pp. 265–87; Andrew Mango,
Ataturk, London, 1999, p. 346.
36 Ataturk’un Soylev ve Demecleri, vol. 2, Ankara, 1989, p. 82.
37 Salih Bozok and Cemil S. Bozok, Hep Ataturk’un Yaninda, Istanbul, 1985; Hasan Riza
Soyak, Ataturk’ten Hatiralar, vol. 1, Istanbul, 1973.
38 The Director of 9 Eylul University Institute of History of Principles and Reforms of
Ataturk, Ergun Aybars, in his book Turkiye Cumhuriyeti Tarihi, vol. 1, Ankara, 1989, devotes
only a single paragraph to the fire. In another book, Ataturk ve Izmir, ed. Sadan Gokovali and
others, Izmir, 1981, which gathers all possible information regarding Ataturk’s relationship
with Izmir, the destruction of the built environment caused by the fire, said to have been
started by the Greeks and Armenians, is discussed in a single page, p. 97.
39 See Parlak, Isgalden Kurtulusa; Aybars, Turkiye Cumhuriyeti Tarihi.
40 Ana Maria Alonso, ‘The Effects of Truth: Re-Presentations of the Past and the
Imagining of Community’, Journal of Historical Sociology 1: 1, 1988, p. 47.
41 Maurice Halbwachs, The Collective Memory (1950), transl. Francis J. Ditter, Jr. and
Vida Yazdi Ditter, New York, 1980, p. 47.
42 Alessandro Portelli, The Death of Luigi Trastulli and Other Stories: Form and Meaning in
Oral History, Albany, NY, 1991, pp. 13–16.
43 Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi, Fascist Spectacle: the Aesthetics of Power in Mussolini’s
Italy, Berkeley, 1997, p. 1–2.
44 Portelli, The Death of Luigi Trastulli, p. 2.
45 Interview, 10 December 1998.
46 Interview, 14 April 1999. I would like to add here that the author of these pages grew up
listening to stories of the entry of the Turkish soldiers to Izmir at the end of the ‘war of
liberation’ from her grandmother. Two generations later the vicarious memories of the cruelty
and barbarism of the Greek occupation were as alive as yesterday. Yet the fire itself that
destroyed my grandmother’s beloved city was never narrated in her stories.
44
47 Interview, 5 April 1999.
48 Interview, 7 February 1999.
49 He uses the phrase ‘gavur geberigi ’: gavur means infidel and geberigi is used for dead
animals.
50 Barrack Square (Kisla Meydani ) is today’s Konak Square, the area in front of Kemeralti,
the old bazaar district. At the time Sarikisla Barracks was located there. Pasaport is the wharf
located near the Frank district. Alsancak is the name given to the fire zone during the
Republican period. It is telling that Frank quarter was renamed as Alsancak (‘red flag’),
a popular way of invoking the Turkish flag.
51 Cumhuriyet’e Kan Verenler, ed. Nail Ekinci, Derman Bayladi, Mahmut Alptekin,
Istanbul, 1973, p. 101 (translation mine).
52 For a further analysis of the development of the slogan ‘Turkey belongs to Turks’ and
the accompanying campaign ‘Citizen: Speak Turkish’, especially in regard to the pressures
against the Jews, see Rifat N. Bali, Cumhuriyet Yillarinda Turkiye Yahudileri: Bir Turklestirme
Seruveni, (1923–1945), Istanbul, 1999, pp. 131–48.
53 Falih Rifki Atay, Cankaya: Ataturk’un Dogumundan Olumune Kadar, Istanbul, 1969,
p. 323 (translation mine).
54 Atay, Cankaya, pp. 324–25 (translation mine).
55 Franz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (1961), transl. Constance Farrington,
New York, 1963, p. 35.
56 Ulvi Olgac, Guzel Izmir Ne Idi Ne Oldu, Izmir, 1939, p. 7.
57 Olgac, Guzel Izmir, pp. 11, 19.
58 Olgac, Guzel Izmir, pp. 20, 24. Posidon, Kramer, Klanaridi were famous cafes and
hotels located around today’s Republic Square and Ataturk monument.
59 Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary, 1972.
60 Michael Kammen, Mystic Chords of Memory: the Transformation of Tradition in
American Culture, New York, 1991, p. 13.

Spatial Representation of Power: Making the Urban Space of

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