Modernist landscapes of Ankara

Abstract

Following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Mustafa Kemal and the Kemalist revolutionaries believed that the new Turkey should be a ‘modern’ democracy and also a ‘green’ country in line with positivist science and modernist culture. In this context, the landscapes of Republican Ankara would become an experimental field for this Turkish nation-building and modernization. This article traces the development of modernist landscape ideology during the early Republican Era in Turkey and its translation by planner and architect Hermann Jansen into detailed design ideas for Ankara. It illustrates the interaction between Jansen’s cutting-edge social and landscape architectural ideas and the Anatolian landscapes after the First World War. Finally, it more widely defends the value of the fantasized and partly realized modernist landscapes of Ankara as part of the urban collective memory in Turkey and the modernist cultural heritage.

• Hermann Jansen
• Ankara
• modernist landscape
• nation-building

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank JoLA’s reviewers and editors for their valuable comments.

Notes

1 As Giritli asserts (1984), Kemalism is a solidly democratic ideology that is rational and scientific, and opposes dogmatic and totalitarian doctrines that impede dynamic action.

For more on Atatürk’s intellectual and ideological formation, see hanioğlu, ş . (2011).

2 Modernity is often interpreted as an outcome of a certain stage of industrial capitalism and urbanization in a Western context and as led by the bourgeoisie (Harvey 1989; Berman 2010). however, in turkey, modernity was a radical ideological project to create a new society totally stripped of its Ottoman heritage and dreamed into existence by technocrat elites of the republic as turkey became a secular nation-state (Tekeli 1994; Tekeli 2011).

3 Regarding the political position of modernism, or the ideological engagements of modernists, many scholars stress the multiplicity of tendencies from radical socialism to militant nationalism to its notorious engagements with Fascism. For a more elaborate discussion, see British cultural historian Williams (2008) and Blair (2011).

4 On the garden city’s journey from england and Germany to turkey, see Akcan (2012).

5 The institute would host and publish the most important German-speaking figures in the field of natural sciences during the late 1920s and early 1930s, including Kurt Krause (1934) Richard Woltereck (1934), and Wilhelm Salomon-Calvi (1936).

6 For example, ernst reuter (first mayor of Berlin after 1945), musicians and writers like Carl ebert and leo spitzer, economists and lawyers like Fritz neumark, Gerhard Kessler and Alexander rustow, doctors such as rudolf nissen and Philip schwartz, the librarian Joseph stummvoll, and architects, artists, and urbanists such as Bruno taut, martin Wagner, hermann Jansen, Gustav Oelsner, Paul Bonatz, margarete schütte-lihotzky, Wilhelm schütte, rudolf Belling (Akcan 2012).

7 After 1933, turkey would become a refuge for left-leaning professionals and academicians fleeing the nazi regime (Bozay 2001). As the nazis were attempting to eliminate modern tendencies in German art and architecture, closing the Bauhaus in Berlin and expelling leading modern architects, urbanists, and artists from Germany (Lane 1968), the mod ern was becoming a symbol of nationalism in turkey, which would support these modern architects and urbanists by having them work on its projects (Nicolai 1998).

8 During the early period of the Weimar republic, German architects, landscape architects, and artists were very politically engaged, actively translating social conditions into the new culture and society envisioned by the regime (Lane 1968). This experience might also have predisposed them to engage sympathetically with the Kemalist regime.

9 In may 1927, the Ankara municipality had sent a technical delegation to Berlin to investigate planners and architects that could be approached about preparing the plans for Ankara. the envoys first approached ludwig hoffman, who declined citing his poor health, but recommended Professors hermann Jansen and P. Joseph Brix from Berlin technical university. On their return to Ankara, the delegation decided to organize a limited project competition (Ş ehremaneti 1929).

10 Brix’s project disappeared just after the jury evaluations and has never been found (Hastaoglu-Martinidis 2011: 166).

Additional information

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Burcu Yiğit-Turan

Burcu Yigit-Turan researches the history and theory of urban and landscape design, focusing on the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. She obtained her PhD in Urban Design from Vienna University of Technology in 2010, defending her dissertation ‘Complexity of Meanings in Urban Landscapes: Between the Imagined and the Real’ with honours. She has been a visiting professor at Istanbul Technical University (I. T. U.) (2010) and at Ball State University, College of Architecture and Planning (2011–2012) in Muncie, Indiana. She currently works as an Assistant Professor at Özyegin University, Faculty of Architecture and Design, in Istanbul.