Today every city and town in Turkey has at least one monument of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881-1938), the founding father of the Turkish Republic, located in one of its most important public spaces. All private and state primary, middle and high schools have at least one bust of him in front of which students have to line up every Monday morning and Friday evening to chant the national anthem. Apart from statues and busts, his portraits and pictures are hung in every office in state buildings and in most private offices. His name has been bestowed upon boulevards, parks, stadiums, concert halls, bridges, forests, and, more importantly, on educational institutions. Among these many public expressions, the monumental statues of Atatürk erected before he died exemplify one of the most effective instruments of the elite-driven modernization in early republican Turkey (1923-1938). These monuments reveal the ways in which Atatürk and his political elites attempted to establish a modern and secular sense of identity as well as a new official public culture and official history, mainly constructed through Atatürk’s Nutuk, the speech which he delivered in 1927. Nutuk was Atatürk’s public defense of his policies during the military and diplomatic struggle for independence in Anatolia between 1919 and 1923. It has not only become a remarkable and extremely influential text both in Turkish and foreign historiographies but also has been the source for visualizing the official interpretation of the struggle for independence in Turkey to the present day. Thus, all the monuments of the early Republic stand for such orthodox interpretations of history, emerging defensive Turkish nationalism and national identity while symbolizing the closure of the predating Ottoman Empire. Codified within this new national identity are the elements of secularization and racial homogenization of the society, a western cult of the “Orient” in the Orient, and an effort to control and limit the cultural and religious hegemony of Islam in the official public culture of early republican Turkey. / text

International discussions on the conservation of the twentieth-century architectural heritage emphasize the diversity of the whole of the built environment of the entire century, rather than limiting consideration to canonic examples of the architectural historiography during the identification and assessment of the properties to be conserved. In contrast to this international holistic and inclusive approach, the approach to the identification and assessment of the properties in Turkey has in general been selective and exclusive. The early Republican architectural heritage of Turkey is defined through canonical examples drawn from the architectural historiography. On the other hand, more modest, anonymous examples, which constitute the great majority of the built environment of the period, are excluded from conservation status. The main argument of this dissertation is that the current exclusive approach, which selects only some important properties for conservation according to their physical characteristics, is far from understanding the political, institutional and social transformations of the early Republican period, as well as the role of architecture in this transformation. On the basis of this idea, a new assessment approach is proposed in this dissertation which could enable to gain conservation status to the whole diversity of early Republican architecture including more modest examples as well as the canonical ones. Contrary to the current exclusive approach which assesses the end product of a process according to its physical characteristics, the proposed approach is inclusive, taking into consideration the formation and usage processes with all their participating meanings and values and considering these processes along with the final physical form of the building itself. The proposed new approach is tested here on the specific case of the primary school buildings of Izmir, the great majority of which are currently remain out of conservation status due to their rather modest physical qualifications. The dissertation concludes that these buildings are an integral part of the education policies of the early Republican period, of the cultural and social transformations informed by these policies, and of the role of architecture in this process, and that these buildings are the tangible evidences of the meanings and values of this formation process. It then goes on to reveal the necessity of understanding the formation process through extensive research in order to be able to incorporate these meanings and values into the assessment phase.

The period from 1930 to 1946 constitutes one of the most important episodes of the history of Turkish Republic. It is the period in which the new regime was consolidated through a series of radical secularizing reforms, which aimed at weakening the role of religion in politics and society and confining it to the private sphere. In this period, the Kemalist regime tried to replace an identity based on religion by one based on the Turkish nation. It has generally been argued that the transition to multi-party regime and the subsequent coming to power of the Democratic Party in 1950 constitutes a serious break with the previous period by opening a greater space for religion in society. This thesis will try to study the construction of Turkish national identity through a comparison of the high school textbooks of the 1930 &ndash / 1950 period and 1950 &ndash / 1960 era.

This thesis examined how Turkish perception of insecurity, which was based on its suspicions about Greek and Bulgarian intentions and politics towards its territorial integrity and stability of its regime, shaped its view of Turkish/Muslim minorities living in these two states in the early Republican period. Using a wealth of archival material and newspapers, it questioned to what extent these physical and ideological concerns of the Turkish Republic played a role in its approach to these minorities in the period between 1923 and 1938. Turkey perceived the Greek and Bulgarian maltreatment of these minorities as a part of these states&rsquo / hostile intentions regarding the new Turkish state. Thus, what this thesis argued is that Turkey responded to pressure on Turkish/Muslim minorities in these two states not only because of humanitarian concerns but according to its security concern, which became an important factor to determine Turkish interventionist approach to the minority issues in Greece and Bulgaria in this period.

As the powerful visual instruments of modernity, museums have been formulated in multiple narratives under the impact of political ideologies in the modern world. The study aims to analyze the museums of different socio-political contexts of the late Ottoman Empire and the early Turkish Republic comparatively by examining to what extent their buildings, collections, and displaying methods were utilized in the formation of collective identities as part of contemporary imperialist, nationalist, and modernist ideologies. The overall aim of the study is to analyze how history and cultural heritage were perceived and processed for the definition of a common cultural identity in the two different historical contexts by focusing on their display in museums. This study examines pioneering archaeological and ethnographic museums in Turkey, focusing on the Ottoman Imperial Museum [M&uuml / ze-i H&uuml / mayun (1887-1891)], the Museum of Pious Foundations [Evkaf-i Islamiye M&uuml / zesi (1914)], Ankara Ethnographical Museum (1925-1927 / opened in 1930), the non-implemented project including a National Museum (also called as Hittite Museum) (1933), and the Hittite Museum (also known as Eti M&uuml / zesi / and later called as Anatolian Civilizations Museum) (restoration began in 1938)]. In order to provide a critical evaluation, the study utilizes the knowledge produced not only in architecture but also in history, archaeology, ethnography, and museology while analyzing the formation of those museums within their contexts.

This study attempts to examine the architecture in Turkey during the Early Republican period as part of the social, economic and political context of the modernization process of the newly founded state, focusing on the case of the ismet PaSa Girls&amp / #8217 / Institute in Ankara. Firstly, the education of woman in general and the Girls&amp / #8217 / Institutes in particular are scrutinized in order to analyze the changes in the social role of women in the context of modernization in the Early Republic. Secondly, the relationship between women and the built environment is examined with reference to the changes women experienced in this context. The architectural context of the period is analyzed to examine the buildings of the Girls&amp / #8217 / Institutes as contemporary examples of the creation of a modern built environment in Turkey. Lastly, the building of the ismet PaSa Girls&amp / #8217 / Institute is examined in detail, by also making comparisons with other contemporary school buildings in Ankara. The building, which was constructed as a modernist school building by the foreign architect Ernst Egli in the center of Ankara, is evaluated as the representation of modern women and modern architecture for the new nation-state. So, the aim of this study is to assess the ismet PaSa Girls&amp / #8217 / Institute in Ankara as the example of contemporary educational institutions as well as of contemporary architecture in Turkey, corresponding with the attempt of the new nation-state towards modernization.

ABSTRACT ARCHITECTURAL INTERPRETATIONS OF MODERNITY AND CULTURAL IDENTITY: A COMPARATIVE STUDY ON SEDAD HAKKI ELDEM AND BRUNO TAUT IN EARLY REPUBLICAN TURKEY Uysal, Zeynep &Ccedil / igdem M.Arch., Department of Architecture Supervisor: Asst. Prof. Dr. Elvan Altan Ergut July 2004, 163 pages The thesis aims to reveal the decisive influence of the tension that stems from the contemporary searches for cultural identity on the architectural production of the early Republican Turkey. It attempts to demonstrate the conceptual and practical strategies that were devised in contemporary architecture for the resolution of the cultural tension by examining the architectural attitudes and practices of Sedad Hakki Eldem and Bruno Taut in the late 1930s and the early 1940s. In the first part, &lsquo / cultural identity&rsquo / is examined from within the general discussion of &lsquo / modernity&rsquo / , where the relevant phenomena, such as &lsquo / nationalism&rsquo / and the &lsquo / nation-state&rsquo / , are discussed. In the second part, the contextual developments and the architectural production of the early Republican period are examined through the theoretical discussions held in the previous part. In the third part, the architectural attitudes and practices of Sedad Hakki Eldem and Bruno Taut are examined and analyzed as to reveal the conceptual and practical strategies in the resolution of contemporary cultural tension. In the conclusion, the significance of the architectural attitudes of Sedad Hakki Eldem and Bruno Taut is re-stated in terms of their contextually sensitive efforts for the disband of the cultural tension in the light of the recent cultural theory.

The historic core of Ankara, has been subject to a rapid change and deterioration increasingly after 1950s, losing most of its original qualities. This thesis analyzes the spatial evolution of the historic city from 1839 to 1940s with the objective to restitute the preexisting urban fabric and the transformation that took place before 1950s. The Early Republican period was critical in the transformation of the historic core as well as in the development of Ankara that was to be shaped as the &lsquo / model city&rsquo / for other Turkish cities. The Old City, which constituted the center of the new capital is studied with a morphological approach in order to restitute the original form and structure of the physical environment and to clarify the changes in the subsequent periods in relation with the socio-economic and institutional structure. Mainly depending on the cartographic materials belonging to the research periods, the study focuses on the physical evolution of the historic city through comparison on the basis of three principal items: urban fabric, urban circulation network and land use pattern. Situating the historic core within the whole Ankara, the research puts special emphasis on the impact of fires and the effects of the planning activity in the related period. The morphological analysis illustrated that the historic core of Ankara was subject to a substantial transformation during the Early Republican period as a result of the interventions brought by the reconstruction plans and piecemeal decisions.

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After the establishment of the Republic of Turkey, urban planning was one of the main instruments for the development of national economy. In this respect, urban plans for numerous cities and towns were prepared between 1923 and 1940 in Turkey. This thesis reveals the reflections of Republican ideology to urban planning principles. The aims of this study are to clarify the political concepts that were active in the Early Republican Period, translation of political concepts to spatial context and to reveal the relation between urban planning experiences and political ideology between 1923 and 1940 in the Republic of Turkey. For this reason, this thesis study examines the construction of Republican ideology in city space via urban planning. The construction of the Republican Revolution in city space is examined in terms of planning practices and evolution of urbanism. The examples of cities planned at that period are evaluated in the context of political ideals and planning principles that were operative in urban planning between 1923 and 1940 in Turkey.