Redefining representational spaces through toponym changes

As noted above, during the 1990s there was an intense process of (re)denomination of urban toponyms in Ankara,Footnote ²¹ according to which toponyms reflecting Ankara’s modern identity were replaced with toponyms referencing the Ottoman past and Islamic identity. My analysis has shown that this trend has continued in the post-2000 period as well. For example, my analysis of 301 renamings of urban toponyms (streets, boulevards, etc.) for the 2013–2015 period reveals that, among these changes,Footnote ²² approximately 23 percent of the new toponyms referred in various ways to Seljuk/Ottoman historiography—the main historical reference point for the ruling AKP—or to Islam. Among the changes, the most frequent type were those that made reference to specific personalities in Seljuk and Ottoman historiography and Islamic thought.Footnote ²³ Although the analysis covers a very short period and so cannot serve as the basis for assertive conclusions, the fact that approximately 23 percent of total toponym replacements refer directly to Islam and Seljuk/Ottoman historiography is quite consistent with the neo-Ottoman and Islamist aspirations of the ruling AKP. As such, this variety of spatial politics throughout the Ankara Metropolitan Municipality reflects the aspirations of the ruling AKP to change the representational spaces of Ankara;Footnote ²⁴ namely, it appears to be a discursive redefinition of space by the ruling power according to the historical narratives (Seljuk/Ottoman historiography) and within the ideological framework (Islamism) from which that power embarks. At least initially, these changes could not be considered deliberate and intentional redefinitions of representational aspects of urban social space simply because some portion of the renamings were in accordance with a particular historiographical discourse or ideological conception of history and politics. During the period under discussion, however, when the AKP initiated toponymic changes for certain important public spaces in the capital (squares, boulevards, etc.), those attempts as well as the discussions revolving around them show that the changes indeed were deliberate redefinitions of representational spaces in Ankara.

Over a four-month period in 2013, the Ankara Metropolitan Municipality constructed a boulevard that was, at the time, called the METU Road since it intersected part of the campus of Middle East Technical University (METU; Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi), connecting the Eskişehir Road and Anadolu Boulevard to the Konya Road. After construction was completed, the municipality’s council decided to rename the road “1071 Malazgirt Boulevard.”Footnote ²⁵ This case is a particularly interesting one in terms of reflecting the representational redefinition of urban social space. The renaming of the boulevard was accepted unanimously by the council,Footnote ²⁶ notwithstanding the reaction from certain parts of society against the new name and following serious discussions in the media.Footnote ²⁷ The reaction of various social groups to the road’s renaming could be read as a reaction to the redefinition of the representational aspects of urban social space by the ruling power, a redefinition that, within the urban social space, aims to make that power’s own chosen historiographical narratives the dominant ones. In connection with the road’s new name, the mayor of Ankara at the time, Melih Gökçek, stated that, “we found this name appropriate in order to remind [people about] the entrance date of the Turks into Anatolia.”Footnote ²⁸ Thus, since the new boulevard is the continuation of Anadolu (i.e., Anatolia) Boulevard, and the Turks’ arrival into Anatolia is traditionally ascribed to the Battle of Manzikert (i.e., Malazgirt) in the year 1071, such a name was especially meaningful.Footnote ²⁹

Naming the boulevard “1071 Malazgirt” was an attempt to produce a representational space symbolizing the Turkish advent in Anatolia, an extremely prominent event in Seljuk historiography; thus, it could be read as the ideologically motivated production of a representational space according to the Seljuk-Ottoman aspirations of the AKP. At the same time, it could also be considered an example of populist nationalism aimed at the wider society; in this regard, the unanimous nature of the council’s renaming decision was not a coincidence. The council named a newly constructed space, rather than renaming an existing space; thus, the act of naming did not involve a serious dispute revolving around representational and counter-representational spaces between various political stakeholders, which in this case would be, first and foremost, between the Republican People’s Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, CHP) and the AKP. Furthermore, because the name symbolizes the entrance of the Turks into Anatolia, the CHP also supported the AKP in this matter, regardless of the fact that the attempt pertained not only to Turkish identity, but also to the AKP’s Seljuk-Ottoman aspirations. In fact, during the same period in Ankara, when a change of name for one of the city’s important squares, Tandoğan Square, was under discussion, one witnesses an interesting attempt by the ruling power to impose its own narrative of national history and produce a representational space proper to that narrative. Here, one can see the spatialization of another variety of rhetoric proper to the AKP.

On April 13, 2015, per a motion proposed by the members of the council of the Ankara Metropolitan Municipality (representing the AKP), the name of Tandoğan Square (Tandoğan Meydanı)Footnote ³⁰ was changed to Anadolu Square (Anadolu Meydanı).Footnote ³¹ The discussions revolving around this motion, as well as the voting by various political parties in the municipal council, are revelatory of certain important aspects in regard to the struggle over various representational spaces. During the hearings at the municipal council, members representing the CHP voted against the motion; representatives of the Nationalist Movement Party (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi, MHP) abstained; and members of the AKP, with the votes of three independent members and one member (İbrahim Uyar) representing the Great Unity Party (Büyük Birlik Partisi, BBP), obtained the necessary two-thirds majority needed to rename the square. Uyar, in making a statement in favor of the square’s renaming, noted that Nevzat Tandoğan, for whom the square was named, had insulted the people of Anatolia by calling them “louts” (öküz); in this way, Uyar implicitly expressed his reasoning for renaming the square.Footnote ³²

The issue of the renaming of Tandoğan Square had also been on the agenda in 2012. At that time, an independent member of the council, Hüseyin Günay, noted that Tandoğan had served as a governor and mayor of Ankara for 18 years, which had been the initial reason for the square’s being named Nevzat Tandoğan Square, but he also expressed the justification for the square’s renaming by stating that, during his period of service, Tandoğan had considered the people of Anatolia second-class citizens, and therefore, “the existence of such a name in the capital city of a country struggling for democracy is inappropriate, for the sake of humanity.”Footnote ³³ In addition, according to Günay, considering also that the prominent Turkish musician and poet Aşık Veysel had been banned from entering Ankara because his appearance and dress did not conform to the dress code enforced by Tandoğan,Footnote ³⁴ Günay proposed renaming Tandoğan Square as “Independence, Republic, and Democracy Square.” Notwithstanding, in 2012, it was decided that instead of completely renaming Nevzat Tandoğan Square, the “Nevzat” would be dropped so that the name would simply be “Tandoğan Square,” with the reasoning being that citizens would not directly relate Tandoğan Square to Nevzat Tandoğan’s personality, and so the name “Tandoğan Square” would not be a direct commemoration of Nevzat Tandoğan, thereby avoiding irrelevant disputes.Footnote ³⁵

In general, the ruling AKP’s initiative to rename the square, and all the disputes surrounding this renaming, could be considered consistent with the party’s populist stance. An emphasis on its “being one of the people” (halktan olma) has been continuously emphasized by the AKP in both political polemics and in its own conception of national history, and this narrative is indeed considered one of the cornerstones of the populist rhetoric advanced by the AKP.Footnote ³⁶

In the discussions revolving around the renaming of Tandoğan Square, one sees the same populist rhetoric in action. Specifically, as a justification for renaming, Nevzat Tandoğan is presented as a figure who served as both the governor of Ankara province and the mayor of the city of Ankara for 17 years. During his period of service, he refused people entrance into Ankara based on their dress, and he considered the people of Anatolia to be second-class citizens, as evidenced by his calling them “louts.” Thus, commemorating his name in a public space was not considered proper “for the sake of democracy and humanity.”Footnote ³⁷ This kind of rhetoric perfectly aligns with Koyuncu’s comments about how the AKP presents itself as “representative of commoners” while Kemalists are presented as “humiliating commoners,” and it reproduces the aforementioned populist rhetoric of the AKP. In this case, however, the discourse revolves around a particular place and aims to produce a different representational space. In this discourse, Tandoğan Square as a space/place is represented as a symbol of those who “humiliate commoners,” and thus the purpose of the renaming is to suppress that particular representational aspect of the square, with the underlying reason for renaming it as “Anadolu” (Anatolia) being the production of a counter-representational space aligned against those who “humiliated” the ordinary people of Anatolia by calling them “louts.” In short, by renaming the square as “Anadolu Square,” the aim was the production of a counter-representation, and in this attempt the square appears as a counter-representational space of populist power.Footnote ³⁸

When the AKP was faced with massive waves of demonstrations from nationalist and secular political groups and citizens in the cities of Ankara, İstanbul, and İzmir in 2007—known as the “Republic Demonstrations” (Cumhuriyet Mitingleri)—the first and largest demonstration in terms of participation took place at Tandoğan Square on April 14, 2007.Footnote ³⁹ Hence, the square as a representational space was not limited by the specific personality of Nevzat Tandoğan and the early periods of the Republic of Turkey (i.e., the Kemalist era). At the same time, via particular spatial practices, the representational aspect of this space came to be reproduced during that demonstration. Moreover, because the demonstration was essentially a show of force by people and political stakeholders with nationalist and secular sentiments against the Islamist AKPFootnote ⁴⁰ —which according to them was undermining the secular foundations of the republic—by taking this representational aspect of the square into account, its renaming could also be read as an attempt by the AKP to suppress this representational aspect of the square as well.

Cases of redefinition of the representational aspects of social space and discussions and disputes revolving around the relevant issues are not limited to the above examples. Among the other examples that might be considered within the same framework are the discussions revolving around naming the square in front of the Ankara Central Railway Station “Peace Square” (Barış Meydanı). On October 10, 2015, the “Labor, Peace, and Democracy” rally—organized by the Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions of Turkey (Türkiye Devrimci İşçi Sendikaları Konfederasyonu, DİSK), the Union of Chambers of Turkish Engineers and Architects (Türk Mühendis ve Mimar Odaları Birliği, TMMOB), the Peoples’ Democratic Party (Halkların Demokratik Partisi, HDP), the Turkish Medical Association (Türk Tabipleri Birliği, TTB), and the Confederation of Public Workers’ Unions (Kamu Emekçileri Sendikaları Konfederasyonu, KESK)—took place in the square to protest escalating conflict between the Turkish armed forces and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê, PKK).Footnote ⁴¹ The rally became a target for a terrorist attack, ultimately the deadliest terror attack in the history of Turkey.Footnote ⁴² After the attack, it was proposed that the square be renamed “Peace Square,” but the Ankara Metropolitan Municipality rejected the proposal and instead renamed it “Democracy Square,” resulting in a dispute over the issue.Footnote ⁴³ Similarly, after the attempted coup of July 15, 2016, the central square of Ankara, Kızılay Square (Kızılay Meydanı), was officially renamed “July 15 Kızılay National Will Square” (15 Temmuz Kızılay Milli İrade Meydanı), which also became a matter of dispute.Footnote ⁴⁴ While some of the above examples were bound to certain very particular political conjunctures, others appeared in the context of narratives bound to certain personalities or events.

However, in the overall period under discussion, the more pertinent trend is the redefinition of social space not through narratives, but rather through the redefinition of social space per se, and the discursive and building practices of külliyes played an important role in this redefinition. Moreover, similar to the case of toponym changes, an Islamist, populist, and neo-Ottoman emphasis reappeared as a part of this redefinition, as will be discussed in the following section.

The university campus as külliye: A discourse practice moving beyond representation

On January 7, 2015, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan made the following statement in his speech at the groundbreaking ceremony for the Esenboğa Campus and the Health Sciences Building of Yıldırım Beyazıt University in Ankara:

Thus, instead of using the word “campus” (kampus) or its Turkish equivalent, yerleşke, to define the space in which a university is located, President Erdoğan deemed the originally Arabic word “külliye” to be “more precise” (daha isabetli), and in so defining this space he created “the first example [of using this word] in this new era.” A külliye is “a complex of buildings around a mosque, consisting of a madrasa (Muslim theological school), an imaret (public soup kitchen), a sebil (public water fountain), a library, a hospital, etc., all of which are built together with the mosque.”Footnote ⁴⁶ In referring to the historical past, Erdoğan alluded to the well-known Islamic külliye complexes of the Ottoman Empire, which were the center of social life, both structurally and institutionally. Külliye spaces were both integral to and organized around a mosque; they represented a complement to a mosque and were managed through a charitable foundation (vakf). In the earlier Ottoman Empire, the concept of a külliye was inherent in the earliest form of a mosque, since one specific building housed the place of prayer, teaching, and hospitality; it was only in later periods that each function was accommodated in its own building located within a larger structure. Though each functional element was structurally separate, together they embodied an architectural and institutional unity.Footnote ⁴⁷ In fact, the word külliye itself is an Ottoman derivation from the Arabic triliteral root kull (كلّ), meaning “whole, monolith, totality, or entirety.”Footnote ⁴⁸ Thus, in the discursive plane, the külliye is explicitly a representation of space,Footnote ⁴⁹ specifically a space the center of which is a mosque and around which social life is organized, representing a totality or wholeness with the mosque.

The attempt to define a university campus as a külliye appears as a discursive redefinition of social space according to a specific representation of space, one that pertains to the sociospatial organization proper to the Ottoman period. Furthermore, if one examines other initiatives of the ruling AKP in this context—such as the project of constructing a mosque on every university campus—it appears that this redefinition is not limited to the discursive plane, but also relates to the redefinition of spatial practices. Particularly, in November 2014, the head of the Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı), Mehmet Görmez, stated that the construction of mosques for 80 universities throughout the country was underway. Fourteen of these mosques were already open to worship, while 50 mosques were projected to open in 2015. In his statement, Görmez said, “We want mosques to be institutionalized. We do not want mosques to be spaces that are only opened before times of prayer and [then] closed [afterward].”Footnote ⁵⁰ During the same period, in 2012, then Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdağ’s statement, given as an epigraph above, that “the presence of mosques on our university campuses is as important as the presence of faculties”Footnote ⁵¹ also clearly reveals the representation of space of the Islamist AKP in regard to university campuses. Thus, the initiative to construct a mosque on every campus appears to be the instillation of certain spatial practices that accord with the aforementioned representation of space, and indeed a complete redefinition of social space.

In this redefinition of university campuses as külliye, there is also a third aspect; namely, the representational one. Here, the rejection of both the English loanword “kampus” and its Turkish equivalent, “yerleşke,” in favor of appropriating the Arabic “külliye” appears as a representational aspect if one looks at how Islamism in Turkey rejects the concepts, reference points, and values pertaining to modernity, Westernization, and Kemalism.Footnote ⁵² Külliye—presented by Erdoğan as a “more precise” definition of “campus”—is thus revealed as a discursive rejection of a particular word that pertains to the “Western” and the “modern.” Hence, the rejection of “campus” proves to be a redefinition of the social space symbolically and mentally, rather than in terms of function and form.

Considering the attempt at the “institutionalization of mosques” in universities as spaces open for both prayer and social activities in tandem with the goal to construct a mosque for every university, it appears that the use of the word “külliye” rather than “kampus” by Erdoğan was not simply a discursive redefinition of space, but also a signifier of an ideology that “only achieves consistency by intervening in social space and in its production, and by thus taking on body therein.”Footnote ⁵³ In other words, here the Islamist ideology is attempting to achieve consistency not only through the discursive redefinition of social space, but also through its material transformation, and it also attempts to acquire significance through the everyday use of social space via relevant spatial practices. In this case, this variety of discourse does not simply reference some historical past as an expression of neo-Ottomanism, but, in accordance with Islamist aspirations, it attempts to integrate the mosque with university life and to instil spatial practice according to the aforementioned representation of space. That is to say, it aims to redefine the social space completely.

In January 2016, the secretariat general of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi, TBMM), while preparing documents for the TBMM’s executive board, replaced “the campus of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey” with “the külliye of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey.”Footnote ⁵⁴ This was another example of instilling the aforementioned representation of space in the discourse, but the essential turning point in this regard was the official redefinition of the Turkish presidential palace as the “Presidential Complex” (Cumhurbaşkanlığı Külliyesi). As the following section will show, this new definition of the presidential complex, similar to the case of university campuses, was not simply discursive in nature: it related to the social and material aspects of the social space and bears implications for our understanding of the politics of space and the space of politics, as well as the emergent new sociospatial order in contemporary Turkey.

Discursive, societal, and monumental aspects of the new presidential complex

The new presidential complex was constructed within the territory of the Atatürk Forest Farm as a service building for the Office of the Prime Minister, utilizing an 18th-century Ottoman-Islamic architectural style.Footnote ⁵⁵ After the 2014 presidential elections, which represent a turning point in the political history of the Republic of Turkey, it became the residence of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.Footnote ⁵⁶ Erdoğan’s relocation to the new site not only after the elections,Footnote ⁵⁷ but also after accepting congratulations in the complex on the occasion of Republic Day on October 29, 2014, served as a symbolization of this turning point, especially as this same day marked the starting date of the official use of this palace.Footnote ⁵⁸ Çankaya Palace, the former presidential residence, had been chosen as a residence by Mustafa Kemal in the 1920s. Although Çankaya Palace underwent numerous transformations, it had always held a central place, at least in the representational space of Ankara. Indeed, Çankaya Palace has been always identified with the secular Republic of Turkey and its foundational principles. After the 1950s, the mausoleum of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Anıtkabir, began to rise in the urban space of Ankara. This mausoleum, along with Çankaya Palace, further contributed to the secular republican identity of Ankara. After the 1980s, however, this identity started to erode with the appearance of Kocatepe Mosque in a central district of Ankara.Footnote ⁵⁹ In this respect, the 2014 completion of the new presidential complex in Beştepe, which became the residence of the first elected president of the republic, was a major turning point in the gradual transformation of the urban skyline and image of Ankara.Footnote ⁶⁰ Moreover, the president’s acceptance of congratulations on the occasion of Republic Day in 2014 in the new palace not only clearly showed the change in the urban skyline of Ankara, but also symbolically reflected the change in Ankara’s long-established representational space.

The new presidential complex redefined the urban skyline and symbolized the new turn in the republic’s political history, not only via its “18th-century Ottoman-Islamic” or “Ottoman-Seljuk” architecture,Footnote ⁶¹ but also with the official identification of the complex as a külliye in 2015, a redesignation that bears certain other interesting implications in terms of both discourse and practice.

Just after the opening of the Beştepe National Mosque (Beştepe Millet Camii)—located on the grounds of the presidential palace—for prayers on July 3, 2015, the site was officially renamed the Presidential Complex (Cumhurbaşkanlığı Külliyesi).Footnote ⁶² As noted above, a külliye is a complex of buildings around a mosque, in which the mosque serves as the focal point. As a result, two ironic points arise in connection with the Presidential Complex: first, the complex as a whole had been conceived earlier, with the mosque only being added to it later; second, with the redesignation, the presidential residence of a secular republic was identified as a külliye, a term with clear Islamic connotations. Nevertheless, these ironies indirectly reflect certain important features of the complex. For one, the mosque is not the center of this space, lacking the centrality and definitive function for the space, because the space’s essential center is the presidential palace, the locus of political power. In this regard, this constellation of the mosque and the presidential palace, together defined as the Presidential Complex (külliye), represents a transformation and reflects the current status of political Islam in Turkey. The center of the Presidential Complex is not actually the mosque, but the residence or locus of power, while the mosque fulfills only a representative function. In other words, the Presidential Complex effectively symbolizes the rise of political Islam over the course of the post-1980 period: its rise to and subsequent solidification of power, as well as its exclusive use of the religious domain as representation, while all that matters revolves at the nearby presidential palace. Thus, the Presidential Complex, although termed a külliye, in fact emerges as the representational space specifically of political Islam in contemporary Turkey.

The other aspect worth elaborating upon is the fact that, even though the complex is identified as a külliye, its külliye aspect also reflects other important realities. As noted above, the word külliye came into Turkish from Arabic, with its root meaning “whole, monolith, totality, or entirety.” In this regard, the Presidential Complex not only dominates the skyline of Ankara as a monumental structure, but also dominates the entire national space, as it reportedly contains a control center possessing the following abilities: 1) the ability to monitor all closed-circuit television systems in Turkey’s 81 provinces through the MOBESE (Mobile Electronic System Integration) system; 2) the ability to record the transmissions of this system on three massive servers; and 3) the ability to access and monitor transmissions from drones, television stations, and 3G networks. Furthermore, also linked to the center are the Gendarmerie; the Directorate of Disaster and Emergency Management (Afet ve Acil Durum Yönetimi Başkanlığı, AFAD); the Information and Communication Technologies Authority (Bilgi Teknolojileri ve İletişim Kurumları); and the National Intelligence Service (Millî İstihbarat Teşkilatı, MİT).Footnote ⁶³ All of these features, while highlighting the Presidential Complex’s function as a kind of panopticon monitoring, policing, and dominating the entire national space, also show that the specific designation of the complex as a külliye is not entirely ironic and contradictory: after all, on the discursive plane, külliye means “totality” and “entirety.” Hence, the Presidential Complex acting as a center of control, surveillance, and domination with these characteristics appears as a conceived space.Footnote ⁶⁴

In early 2015, when the Presidential Complex was not yet officially identified as a külliye, President Erdoğan discussed the possible nomination of the complex as a kulliye:

As is clear from the above statement, the Presidential Complex was designed as a full-service space with various spatial arrangements meant to cater to the needs of visiting neighborhood representatives. In the hierarchy of governance, neighborhood representatives (muhtar) represent the state’s closest connection to ordinary people at the village and neighborhood levels. Thus, typical meetings between President Erdoğan and neighborhood representatives seek to exhibit the Presidential Complex as a locus of national space that accommodates the encounter between common people and the presidential authority. This spatial practice fits in perfectly with the populist rhetoric of the AKP, in which the AKP and its leader Erdoğan are directly presented as representatives of the common people. As such, the Presidential Complex, as a center accommodating the meeting of governor and governed, emerges as a representational space of populist rhetoric and practice. Furthermore, in this manner, the AKP is also trying to counter the early period of the Republic of Turkey, when, during the one-party rule of the Kemalist era, ordinary people were excluded from political life—a fact that the AKP has consistently used as a way of building its populist rhetoric. Thus, the Presidential Complex has also become a relevant case for the spatialization of the AKP’s populist rhetoric, one which pertains to the representational aspect of this space. On October 28, 2015, during the reception organized in the Presidential Complex on the occasion of Republic Day, President Erdoğan referred to the early periods of the republic as follows:

This statement clearly reinforces the populist rhetoric of the AKP as supposed representatives of the common people, who are “the real owners of the nation” in opposition to the “guardians, who do not want their development.” At the same time, the AKP is also presented as representative of the nation and the only force that can stand against the “guardians.” In this narrative, the Presidential Complex is highlighted as a product of the struggle against guardianship foci and thus appears as the representational space of “the people as the real owners of the republic.”

According to Lefebvre, “monumental space offer[s] each member of a society an image of that membership, an image of his or her social visage. It thus constitute[s] a collective mirror more faithful than any personal one”; and through this collective mirror, “the monument thus effect[s] a ‘consensus,’ and this in the strongest sense of the term, rendering it practical and concrete.”Footnote ⁶⁷ In this regard, Erdoğan’s statement that “from now on, the owner of the republic is our people/nation and the Presidential Complex is its symbol,” and that the Presidential Complex “symbolizes the reunion of the ordinary people with the state, and […] the fact that the owner of the republic is not this or that establishment or faction, but the public itself” could be considered an attempt to present a collective mirror for society. In his speech, Erdoğan also attempts to define this space as, in Lefebvre’s words, “a collective mirror more faithful than any personal one,” and as a monumental space that effects a societal “consensus” for a part of society and renders that consensus “practical and concrete”: “This [complex] is not my personal home but the home of the people/nation (millet). With this work, a different image is presented to the world. This work shows the greatness of this nation (millet).”Footnote ⁶⁸

In discussing the populist rhetoric of the AKP, which has been working to present the Presidential Complex as a meeting place between ordinary people and the ruling power, it is worth briefly noting some of the features of the former presidential palace, Çankaya Palace, during the period of Kemalist rule. This will be an aid in understanding the politics of space of the populist AKP as compared to earlier periods of the republic, while also helping to provide some historical context for the AKP’s populist rhetoric.

As mentioned above, the former presidential palace was chosen by Mustafa Kemal as a residence in the 1920s, and subsequently it has always been identified with the secular republic and its foundational principles, an identification that applied to all the conceived, perceived, and lived aspects of the palace. The Kemalist elite, and particularly Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, considered themselves and their own lifestyles as exemplary of their mission to modernize and Westernize Turkish society.Footnote ⁶⁹ Thus, as Akcan notes, their houses were designed in such a way as to show the people how modern dwellings and modern lifestyles should be. Moreover, their houses were designed as emblems of Westernization and modernization, and as proof to the world outside that Turkish bureaucrats had freed themselves from “Oriental” habits. In other words, along with their functions as dwellings, the houses were also a propaganda tool for the state and a stage for a nationalist showcase. Çankaya Palace, through both its location in the city and its frequent coverage in the media, clearly evidences these functions of the palace.Footnote ⁷⁰ Thus, in this regard, the palace was a representation of the space of the Kemalist elite’s attempts at modernization and Westernization.Footnote ⁷¹

The representational aspects of the palace, however, went far beyond its architectural style and location. As Cantek notes, during the lifetime of Atatürk, the palace operated as a unique stage for frequent activities (i.e., spatial practices) such as evening parties, and it was a frequent focus for the media of the time as well. Through such activities, Atatürk and the Kemalist elite sought to popularize the modern and Western urban lifestyle among the ordinary population.Footnote ⁷² These spatial practices were closely related to the representation-of-space aspect of the palace, which, as Akcan points out, was “not a private space, but a space blurring the definition of private and public,” since it served as a stage for both official and unofficial meetings.Footnote ⁷³ Even so, the palace with its “openness,” and alongside the public spaces of the city generally, which were the center of “Western” and “modern” spatial practices, were, as Nalbantoğlu notes, a factor in significant tensions resulting from encounters between old (i.e., traditional, rural) and new (i.e., modern, urban).Footnote ⁷⁴ The monumental architecture and urban spaces of the city of Ankara appeared as “sanitized” spaces aimed at guarding the “modern” image of the city, and there were cultural and spatial boundaries in the capital that were delineated with the utmost care in order to protect the “modernist” grand narrative of the time from “non-Western” and “non-modern” meanings and values.Footnote ⁷⁵ It is in this context that the aforementioned policing and dress-code enforcement practices seen during the time of Nevzat Tandoğan complete the grand picture. It is exactly this aspect of early republican Ankara and the attempts of the Kemalist elite to create a “modern” urban experience that created tensions between old and new, between the elites (with their modern lifestyles) and the common people (with their traditional way of life and exclusion from the public space). It is against this background that President Erdoğan—referring to celebrations where participants wore full dress suits, danced waltzes, and drank champagne while poorly clothed ordinary people looked on in astonishment from outside—worked to present the Presidential Complex as a place that “hosts and cherishes citizens of every region and every part of the nation.” Based on this background narrative, Erdoğan positioned his power as the representative of the ordinary people, and this narrative is precisely the reason that the Presidential Complex emerges as a representational space that reflects the spatialization of populist discourse in the Turkish capital. However, it remains to be explored whether and how the Presidential Complex has contributed to spatial and cultural tensions in the capital and the nation, a topic that goes beyond the limits of this paper.