Burak Erdim’s Landed Internationals presents original research on the geopolitical and institutional formation of the Middle East in the post-World War II period to contribute to the study of architectural and planning history, Cold War development politics, and transnational academic exchange. With a background in planning and architectural history, Erdim’s well-researched book crafts a multifaceted narrative that locates Middle East Technical University (METU) at the epicenter of international development during the Cold War period, educational transformation, and the complex interplay between national and international agencies. Drawing extensively from the archives of the METU School of Architecture Archive and the Architectural Archives at the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn), and international organizations, including the United Nations (UN), Erdim reconstructs a transnational history of expertise and planning.

The central claim of the book is that METU was far more than a higher education institution: it was a node in a vast network of architectural, geopolitical, and economic exchanges. Erdim introduces the concept of “landed internationals” to characterize a new class of transnational professionals who moved between national and global planning regimes. These experts were involved in postwar reconstruction projects and the export of modernist planning models; many were affiliated with the UN and the United States (US) Foreign Operations Administration. However, as Erdim demonstrates, the dynamic and often contentious encounters with local Turkish professionals and policymakers (re)shaped and (re)defined their work and the development process. He describes his analytical approach as an “archaeology of encounters” (p. 3), which entails close reading of architectural drawings, correspondence, planning papers, and interviews in order to reconstruct METU’s history. This method enables him to draw attention to the various viewpoints that influenced the establishment of the institution and were frequently at odds with one another. Rather than a linear diffusion of American models to Turkey, what emerges is a contested and negotiated process in which Turkish actors exercised significant influence.

The book is structured around an introduction, six core chapters, and an epilogue. Chapter 1 traces the prehistory of METU through earlier housing and land reform missions in postwar Turkey. Erdim examines how the discourse of land economics and regional planning served as a site of negotiation between foreign experts and the Turkish state’s modernizing elites by outlining how Turkey emerged as a strategic location for the US-led Marshall Plan’s technical assistance. He explains that the Marshall Plan was “more of an administrative mechanism than a mere development aid,” one which “established a massive administrative apparatus in each country of reconstruction, restructuring their administrative organizations and maintaining records in each and every category of governmental action” (p. 29). Erdim also demonstrates that the Turkish state, despite accepting foreign expertise, sought to instrumentalize it in service of its own goals: industrial modernization, educational expansion, and national territorial integration. Foreign experts like Charles Abrams thus encountered a political landscape far more complex than he anticipated, leading him to shift his focus from supporting particular policies to institutional training and development. This tension reveals an important theme of the book: the failure of the technical universality and the emergence of locally anchored internationalism.

After facing resistance and institutional inertia, Abrams shifted his focus from suggesting policy proposals to founding a school of architecture and planning. The second chapter looks at how, during the global Cold War, educational and technological institutions acted as a proxy for ideological competition. For Turkish administrators seeking legitimacy in the new postwar international order, hosting an internationally supported university campus was a powerful symbol of modernity and sovereignty. In-depth analyses of Abrams’ official project reports, letters, and memos show the active role that Turkish officials played in negotiating with their Western colleagues, challenging the notion of a unidirectional transfer of expertise. The chapter particularly emphasizes the role of Turkish “in-perts,” as Abrams refers to local professionals, as a counterweight to the notion of passive receivers of progress (p. 80).

In Chapter 3, Erdim traces the complex institutional negotiations that led to the founding of METU, focusing on the diplomatic, administrative, and architectural challenges of establishing a school that would meet both Turkish national needs and Western international standards. Delving into how curriculum planning and pedagogical core were integral to the construction of a new national elite, Erdim demonstrates how METU’s creation became a crucible for larger ideological tensions. He reconstructs how American educators, particularly G. Holmes Perkins, Dean of the School of Fine Arts at UPenn, collaborated and negotiated with Turkish officials to design METU’s institutional model. He shows curriculum discussions being turned into a battleground for ideologies, with local educators increasingly resisting what they saw as Western paternalism.

Chapters 4 and 5 examine the architecture of the METU campus as a concrete and symbolic embodiment of both national sovereignty and international collaboration. The placement of METU was not incidental; it was designed in direct spatial dialogue “in relation to the capital city and the ministerial offices of the state” (p. 124). Unlike the early UPenn proposals, which drew inspiration from international modernist idioms and tried to incorporate symbols like a forum or mosque, Turkish architects Altuğ and Behruz Çinici, seeking to “maintain control over the design and construction of the METU campus” (p. 173), reinterpreted the campus in a brutalist style that prioritized local identity, modern republicanism, and resistance to Cold War binaries. They rejected ornamental symbolism and placed an emphasis on functionality and minimalism. As Erdim observes, the final design marked the (re)birth of METU as a national endeavor emerging from the dry plains of the Anatolian steppe. It was both a break from and a continuation of international influences, and the campus became a metaphor for postwar Turkish modernity itself. METU hence became a spatial and symbolic laboratory for (re)conceiving the relationship among higher education, landscape, architectural design, and national identity in Cold War Turkey. The site itself, as Erdim explains, “symbolized the progressive construction of the nation-state” (p. 167), and was purposefully distant from the political center of Ankara, allowing for both ideological projection and spatial experimentation. Its spatial organization was not a rejection of modernism per se but a recalibration of its esthetic and social implications within a Turkish context.

In the final chapter, Erdim’s core themes are transnational influence, institutional agency, and architectural politics. His archival and design-focused analysis demonstrates that modernity was not imported wholesale but reassembled on Turkish terms. The chapter emphasizes the intersection of architectural form, environmental policy, and political symbolism as local actors took control of the campus vision and redefined its ideological and spatial meaning. Erdim highlights how Turkish actors repurposed these visions to suit local conditions. For example, he skillfully explains how the Çinicis’ reinterpretation of spatial forms drew on Anatolian geography and modernist idioms simultaneously. In the final analysis, Erdim argues that these spatial decisions contributed to the “construction of the narrative for METU and the nation in a number of ways” (p. 225), demonstrating that architecture at METU functioned as a cultural and institutional articulation of Turkish postwar sovereignty.

The epilogue ties together the thematic strands of the book and gives the reader a sense of the enduring complexity of the postwar development period. METU exemplifies how architecture and planning served not merely as technocratic disciplines but as powerful cultural tools for narrating the modern Turkish nation. Erdim argues the emergence of a new kind of development actor: the “landed internationals.” In METU’s case, these actors embedded themselves into national contexts through educational institutions, creating infrastructure that would train local professionals that he called “in-perts” to carry forward development. His concluding remarks emphasize the book’s main understanding that architecture and planning were not simply technical endeavors but also powerful instruments for narrating the modern nation.

Landed Internationals appeals especially because of its insistence on complexity and contradiction. The book’s strength also lies in its extensive archival research and its ability to situate METU in a broader historiography of planning, modernism, and postcolonial development. Erdim’s focus on both global networks and individual institutional cultures distinguishes the book from previous studies of development or architectural export. He not only tells the story of a university but also reveals how planning cultures, national sovereignty, and global networks intersect in the making of modern states.

Landed Internationals’ exclusive focus on METU, however, keeps readers from gaining a more comprehensive understanding of the scope of American influence on Turkish education in general and higher education, in particular. A comparative look at Boğaziçi University (formerly Robert College) – one of the first American missionary colleges built outside of the US and a relevant example of how US institutions were built in non-Western settings – could have added to the book’s analysis by giving it a longer historical view of American academic presence in Turkey. METU came about because of state-backed modernization initiatives and Cold War development policies. Boğaziçi, on the other hand, relied on older traditions of US–Turkish academic cooperation based on internationalism and the liberal arts. Placing METU in the larger context of academic cooperation between the US and Turkey would have highlighted a more comprehensive and diverse history of American academics in Turkey and would have provided a more sophisticated understanding of the ways in which various institutional trajectories and changing geopolitical contexts led to the localization of foreign expertise over time. Moreover, several other American-affiliated institutions, such as İzmir American Collegiate Institute, Merzifon, Talas, Antep, Tarsus, and Üsküdar American College, among many others, contributed to the development of Turkey’s contemporary educational system. Despite being primarily secondary schools, they established a transnational intellectual infrastructure that paved the way for later state–university partnerships. These earlier institutions supported internationalism and liberal arts education from a missionary or philanthropic perspective, in contrast to METU, which was established as part of national development plans during the Cold War. Such points are to be seen less as shortcomings than as ideas and questions inspired by the book. Landed Internationals is a timely and significant contribution for scholars of architectural history, planning history and cultures, Cold War politics, and transnational education. It will be especially valuable for those interested in how local actors actively reshaped global ideologies through institutional and spatial practices.