Kasaba R. The Cambridge History of Turkey: Volume 4, Turkey in the Modern World

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qualities of that context. The towering ﬁgure of modern Turkish architecture,

Sedad Hakkı Eldem, continued his proliﬁc career along these new lines. Pri-

vate patronage of architecture enabled him to produce some of his best villas

for the leading industrialists, businessmen and wealthy families of Istanbul,

mostly along the shores of the Bosporus. Among these, villas for the Kırac¸,

Us¸aklıgıl, Sirer, Bayramo

glu, Koc¸ and Komili families are signiﬁcant examples

of his life-long commitment to the iconography of the traditional ‘Turkish

house’ reinterpreted in modern terms. His use of traditional plan types, the

repetition of modular vertically proportioned windows and the wide roof over-

hangs, which were the leitmotifs of his ‘national architecture’ programme in

the 1930s and 1940s, became the distinguishing features of his accomplished

career in the 1960s and 1970s. In his award-winning ofﬁce complex/social centre

for the Social Security Organisation in Zeyrek (1963–70), he employed the same

stylistic leitmotifs and successfully fragmented the programme into smaller

volumes, with sensitivity to the historical context of the Zeyrek district.

Another important name in ‘regionalist’ modernism is Turgut Cansever

(b. 1922), whose Turkish Historical Society building in Ankara (1966) demon-

strates how a modern building can be sensitive to local context, materials and

historical precedents and still make a civic, urban presence. Likewise, Cengiz

Bektas¸(b.1934), the prominent poet/architect and designer of the Turkish

Language Society building in Ankara (1972–8), also advocated learning from

vernacular traditions and from the old houses and neighbourhoods of Ana-

tolia in order to combat the facelessness and placelessness of international

high modernism. During the same years, the preservation efforts of C¸ elik

ulersoy’s Automobile Association began in Istanbul, symbolising nostalgia

for the architectural and urban qualities of Istanbul before the onslaught of

urbanisation and gecekondu development. The preservation and adaptive reuse

of late Ottoman buildings, kiosks and pavilions under the sponsorship of the

Automobile Association was an important step in the cultivation of a pub-

lic consciousness of historical heritage, albeit in a rather commodiﬁed and

‘touristy’ fashion that is not without controversy.

Between 1950 and 1980, in addition to the foundation of METU, the num-

ber of architectural schools multiplied, with new architectural departments in

Ankara, Istanbul, Izmir, Trabzon, Konya and Edirne. As the number of pro-

fessional architects increased dramatically, a concomitant ‘proletarianization

of the profession’

followed, radicalising the Chamber of Architects along

41 A. Y

ucel, ‘Pluralism takes command’, in R. Holod and A. Evin (eds.), Modern Turkish

Architecture (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983), p. 122.

454

Art and architecture in modern Turkey

leftist lines. Sympathetic to Third World and ‘non-aligned’ versions of mod-

ernisation, they advocated a shift of attention from Western architectural

models to the lessons of vernacular architecture and squatter settlements and,

even more strongly, from the aesthetics of architecture to the politics of the

production processes. One consequence was a growing academic interest in

squatter housing as an alternative social and architectural model, outside the

domain of both the state and the profession and from which architects could

learn. Often built by the inhabitants themselves, squatter houses represented

spontaneous and piecemeal processes of construction with meagre resources,

the conceptual opposite of professional/technocratic solutions ‘from above’

(see ﬁg. 16.9). As social criticism and ideas about participatory and demo-

cratic design methods entered architectural discourse with full force, other

important issues such as history, preservation, energy consciousness, scien-

tiﬁc design methods and environmental controls were also taken up, sig-

niﬁcantly enriching architectural debates beyond issues of form and style.

It is possible to conclude that, during the 1960s and early 1970s, there was

indeed a critique of high modernism in its architectural form that came

from within modernist premises, without surrendering the enlightenment

epistemologies on which design professions are built. However, this founda-

tional belief in the ability of modern architecture to transform society for the

better rapidly waned in the political, economic and cultural climate of the

1980s.

Postmodern trends: after 1980

The period following the military coup of 1980 is commonly identiﬁed with the

still-contentious legacy of the late Turgut

Ozal, prime minister and president,

who initiated a spectacular transformation of Turkey along the economically

liberal and culturally conservative paths set by Reagan and Thatcher in the

West. Labelled ‘the third Republic’ by the historian Erik Z

urcher,

this period

marks the end of nationalist developmentalism, an unequivocal reorientation

of the country towards free markets and global capitalism and an accelerated

push towards the decades-old ambition to join the EU. In this period, the

ofﬁcial ideology, cultural norms and mental habits of the old Republican elite,

as well as of the traditional left, have been challenged in unprecedented ways by

groups ranging from advocates of liberal economy, civil society and popular

42 Z

urcher, Turkey,pp.292–322.

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culture to various Islamist groups.

As in many other parts of the world,

particularistic discourses of identity have emerged to compete for visibility in

public space and the media, shaking the earlier belief in modernisation theories

and homogeneous nation-states. Particularly remarkable has been the rise of

political Islam as a major force, ﬁrst following the municipal election victories

of the Welfare Party (WP) in the 1990s and more recently, the sweeping rise

of Recep Tayyip Erdo

gan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) to power.

The seemingly paradoxical picture that many commentators observe is that

the more democratic Turkey becomes (largely through the pressure of the

prospects of EU membership), the more ‘Islamic’ it seems to get, and that

Islam has far more presence in Turkish society and politics today than it has

had at any other time in Republican history.

One conspicuous consequence of these developments is a new sense of rec-

onciliation between artistic/cultural production and some overtly Ottoman

or Islamic themes, motifs and precedents. In a ‘postmodern’ world more sym-

pathetic to discourses of identity than before, works that deliberately high-

light the Ottoman/Islamic ingredients of Turkish culture have been received

favourably at both national and international levels, especially if they have been

capable of casting these ingredients in Western artistic and literary terms. A

most notable example in art is the work of Erol Akyavas¸(1932–99), arguably the

most important contemporary Turkish painter, whose work embodies com-

plex cross-cultural encounters. Although not entirely new, Akyavas¸’s earlier

preoccupation with Islamic arts, miniature painting, calligraphy and paper-

marbling as the possible philosophical and aesthetic sources of a modern

Turkish art has grown even stronger in this period, as for example in his 1987

Mirac¸name series of limited-edition prints inspired by the story of the Prophet’s

ascent to Heaven (see ﬁg. 16.15). With his formative years well grounded in

Western modernist and surrealist avant-garde currents and having worked

between Istanbul and New York for many years, Akyavas¸’s work epitomises

a new form of trans-national cultural production that skilfully mixes West-

ern genres with Islamic aesthetic sensibilities, not unlike the internationally

acclaimed novels of Turkey’s literary celebrity and 2006 Nobel laureate Orhan

Pamuk.

On the architectural scene, while the professional establishment continues

to be largely secular and modernist, there is a wide consensus that archi-

tects who acknowledge indebtedness to Turkish and Islamic traditions have

43 See S. Bozdo

gan and R. Kasaba (eds.), Rethinking Modernity and National Identity in Turkey

(Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997); S. Bozdo

gan and R. Kasaba, ‘Turkey at

a Cross-road’, Journal of International Affairs 54 (Fall 2000), pp. 1–20.

456

Art and architecture in modern Turkey

Fig. 16.15 Erol Akyavas¸, Mirac¸name, limited edition print (1987), Galeri Nev, Istanbul

[print in the author’s collection]

gained a new visibility after 1980. It is, for example, of considerable symbolic

signiﬁcance that the prominent architect Turgut Cansever (b. 1922) has identi-

ﬁed himself more vocally with an Islamic world view in this period. In a 1991

interview, he blamed the contemporary plight of architecture and urbanism

on Renaissance humanism and on the instrumental rationality of modernism,

calling for a return to the philosophical premises and craft foundations of tra-

ditional Islamic environments.

His award-winning Demir Holiday Village

on the Bodrum peninsula (1971), which adapts the stone vernacular traditions

of the region, albeit for a thoroughly secular, modern and wealthy urban

clientele, has become a canonic example of the pervasive ‘return to tradition’

44 See interview with T. Cansever in Dergah (July1991).

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trend that marked postmodernism everywhere in the world. The inception

of the A

ga Khan Awards in 1980 for recognising good architecture in Muslim

countries and the subsequent awards given to tradition-conscious architects

such as Sedad Hakkı Eldem and Turgut Cansever have also contributed to

a heightened awareness of Islamic traditions and historical precedents within

the architectural community, while drawing criticism from the staunchly mod-

ernist adversaries of this rising traditionalism.

If such selective and well-crafted artistic/architectural productions like

those of Eldem and Cansever represent the higher/elite end of traditional

Islamic aesthetic sensibility, its lower end contains the more pervasive and

popular expressions of political Islam in Turkey, most visibly the phenome-

nal increase of mosque construction all over the country. Largely the work of

anonymousdesigners,often cheaply constructed and devoidof aesthetic merit,

such mosques are, ﬁrst and foremost, highly visible political statements of a

reclaimed Muslim identity, rather than programmatic architectural responses

to any real need for prayer space. The case of the later design for Kocatepe

Mosque in Ankara (1967–87) is a dramatic example illustrating the current con-

frontation between Islamists and secularists in Turkey. Designed by H

usrev

Tayla and Fatin Uluengin as a monumental ‘neo-Ottoman’ mosque crown-

ing a hilltop across from the Anıtkabir (the ultimate monument to Atat

urk

and secular nationhood), the Kocatepe Mosque is probably the most provoca-

tive challenge to the secular Republican identity of the national capital (see

ﬁg. 16.16).

Yet the fact that the Kocatepe Mosque complex also contains a

vast supermarket and parking garage in its lower levels illustrates a distinctly

postmodern juxtaposition of consumer society with renewed religiosity.

In contrast to Kocatepe’s overt reference to classical Ottoman precedents,

the design of the new Parliament Mosque complex (1989), an innovative mod-

ernist combination of prayer hall and library without any recognisable markers

of Islamic identity such as a dome or a minaret, is a compelling illustration

of the fact that while the increasing presence of Islam is an undeniable fact of

post-1980 Turkey, its particular form and aesthetics are still hotly contested.

Although the construction of a mosque within the grounds of the Turkish

Grand National Assembly does indicate the power of an increasing number of

45 S¸. Vanlı, ‘D

onemin mimarisi, yirminci y

uzyıl sorumlulu

gu’, Yapı 248 (2002) and the

following polemical debates with Suha

Ozkan, the deputy secretary general of the A

Khan Awards.

46 For a discussion of these two monuments in terms of their politics and identity impli-

cations see M. Meeker, ‘Once there was, once there wasn’t: national monuments and

interpersonal exchange’, in Bozdo

gan and Kasaba (eds.), Rethinking Modernity.

458

Art and architecture in modern Turkey

Fig. 16.16 Kocatepe Mosque complex, Ankara (1967–87); contemporary replica of a

classical Ottoman mosque epitomising the new prominence of Islam in the Turkish

urbanscape

[photograph by the author]

conservative, Muslim representatives in the current parliament, the choice of

a conspicuously modernist design by the architects, Behruz and Can C¸ inici,

can be seen as a successful compromise, more palatable to the secularist estab-

lishment than the Kocatepe Mosque. In other instances, the ‘culture wars’

between the secularists and Islamists have not been so reconciliatory, as for

example in the controversial proposal of Ankara’s conservative Islamist mayor

Melih G

okc¸ek to change the logo of the municipality from a Hittite symbol,

rooted in the Kemalist nationalism of the 1930s, to the domes and crescents of

Islam. Equally controversial has been the proposal, after the 1994 municipal

victory of the WP, to build a new mosque in Taksim Square – a proposal that

was resisted and ﬁnally defeated after the WP was forced out of power in 1997.

However, the fact that similar proposals for new mosque construction keep

coming up under the current AK Party government (such as a recent proposal

to build a mosque in G

oztepe Park on the Asian side of Istanbul) testiﬁes to the

continuing contest over symbols. If the ‘headscarf controversy’ constitutes the

ﬁrst symbolic battleground between the Republic’s foundational secularism

and the growing Islamic tide after the 1980s, mosque construction is clearly

the second.

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At the same time, this increasing presence of Islam in Turkish culture coex-

ists with an equally strong presence of the effects and cultural expressions of

globalisation in Turkey. An inexorable construction boom continues to trans-

form the physical fabric of major Turkish cities, especially Istanbul, with the

familiar spaces of trans-national capitalism everywhere: ﬁve-star hotel chains,

supermarkets and shopping malls, international fast-food chains, business cen-

tres, ofﬁce towers and holiday villages. A parallel global trend gaining popular-

ity in Turkey is the rise of a new upper-income residential typology, namely the

development of luxury villas in exclusive gated communities, complete with

golf courses, swimming pools, tennis courts and ﬁtness clubs within privately

controlled boundaries. These exclusive suburbs, such as Kemer Country on

the European side of Istanbul or Kasaba on the Asian side, are marketed with

the promise of offering their residents ‘exclusive lifestyles’ close to nature,

away from the chaos, congestion and pollution of the city. Large ﬁnance capi-

tal and leading banks have entered this lucrative residential sector (such as

Is¸

Bankası in Kasaba) and it is not uncommon to ﬁnd the stamp of prominent

international designers in upper-class residential development in Istanbul, as

for example in the case of Maya Residences in Etiler, designed by Skidmore,

Owings & Merril, the American corporate giant whose work in Turkey goes

back to the Istanbul Hilton in the early 1950s.

Although formal/stylistic references to traditional Ottoman houses seem

to be the most popular and easily marketable choice of developers (see

ﬁg. 16.17), as in the Kemer and Kasaba examples, a wide stylistic repertoire is

available for different tastes – from more abstract modern designs, such as the

Optimum Villas outside Istanbul on the Asian side, designed by the talented

young architect Han T

umertekin, to Kemer Country’s weekend houses in the

style of ‘American log cabins’. Primarily catering to a wealthy, internationally

connected and technologically savvy clientele of young professionals, business,

ﬁnance and media elites, such exclusive residential suburbs (and the luxury cars

and SUVs that make these new lifestyles away from the city possible), testify

to the progressive retreat of the wealthy, educated and Westernised elites from

public urban space, which, in turn, is increasingly occupied by the poorer, more

traditional, visibly more ‘Muslim’ populations from the urban fringes. In stark

contrast to aesthetically pleasing wealthy neighbourhoods and luxury suburbs,

the poorer urban fringes offer visible testimonies to how the global market

economy and the new wealth it creates exist side by side with expressions of

extreme urban poverty and disorder, particularly in a vast metropolis such as

Istanbul. Any visitor approaching Istanbul by land can witness the unchecked

sprawl of the city in all directions, the ever-growing high-rise shantytowns (the

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Art and architecture in modern Turkey

Fig. 16.17 New residential development in Kemer, a suburb of Istanbul, showing the use

of neo-traditionalist ‘Turkish style’ fac¸ades (2004)

[photograph by the author]

newer versions of gecekondus), entire satellite cities with sub-standard housing

construction and very poor infrastructure collectively pointing to an overall

aesthetic deterioration.

Reﬂecting the heterogeneity, plurality and visual contrasts of contempo-

rary architecture and urbanism, contemporary Turkish culture is equally

diverse. Everywhere in Turkey, but especially in Istanbul, a vibrant popu-

lar culture ﬂourishes: the so-called arabesk music blasting out of shops, taxis

and minibuses that provide transport to and from new squatter settlements,

cheap little mosques with aluminum domes, kebap restaurants opened by

migrants from the south-east, plastic ornaments sold in the streets and many

other forms of contemporary ‘kitsch’ produced and consumed by the poorer

migrant populations of urban fringes. Reactions to this colourful scene dis-

play a wide range of positions. The old guard of Republican intellectuals,

along with many established artists and architects, resents this cheapening

of culture and hybridisation of tastes – this ‘invasion’ and transformation of

their beloved Istanbul by rural migrants. They uphold the values of high art

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and elite culture, whether of the West or of classic Islam, as defended – for

example – by the painters Mehmet G

ulery

uz and Erol Akyavas¸ respectively.

By contrast, a younger generation of ‘postmodern’ artists and intellectuals

embrace popular culture, ethnic mixings and hybrid experiences as the very

reality of Turkish identity, between East and West, between country and city,

between modern aspirations and their constant frustration. What Latife Tekin

has accomplished in literature

and Fatih Akin in cinema,

the paintings of

uls

un Karamustafa have accomplished in art. Some of Karamustafa’s work

uses arabesk motifs and a kind of ‘kitsch aesthetic’ to offer a critique of elitism.

Another young artist, Nur Koc¸ak, directly engages with trends such as Amer-

ican hyperrealism and photo-realism in order to problematise the boundaries

between art and advertisement.

Contemporary and avant-garde artistic experiments, especially the New

Tendencies Exhibitions (Yeni E

gilimler Sergileri) have taken hold in Istanbul

since the art festivals of the Academy of Fine Arts in the late 1970s. Con-

ceptual art, multi-media installations and the inﬂuence of currents like ‘Arte

Povera’ and ‘New Realism’ were represented in these exhibitions, challeng-

ing both the more conventional art of the establishment and the ideological

impositions of the traditional left in Turkey. The conceptual artworks, spatial

installations and collages of S¸

ukr

u Aysan, Serhat Kiraz and their Art Deﬁni-

tion Collective (Sanat Tanımı Toplulu

gu, STT) were important pioneering

experiments. Other young artists such as Canan Baykal, G

uls

un Karamustafa,

Ays¸e Erkmen, Hale Tenger, Erda

g Aksel and Adem Genc¸ occupy the cutting

edge of contemporary Turkish art, participating in major international art

events. The number of Turkish artists living and working abroad has also sub-

stantially increased in this period, now including ﬁrst- and second-generation

immigrants permanently settled in Europe and the US. Accomplished sculptor

Azade Koker (Berlin), artists Adem Yılmaz (Cologne), S¸

ukran Aziz (NewYork),

Canan Tolon (San Francisco) Utku Varlık (Paris) and the ceramic artist Alev

Ebuzziya Siesbye (Denmark) are some of the better-known names. Within

Turkey, Bedri Baykam, arguably the most colourful personality on the Turk-

ish scene as an artist, public ﬁgure and political activist, combined abstract

expressionism, grafﬁti and political content in his earlier paintings. In 1994,he

made a show of his secularist Kemalist political activism in the form of an art

installation titled Kuvay-i Milliye, and has embarked upon a second career as an

47 See L. Tekin, Berji Kristin: Tales from the Garbage Hills (New York: Marion Boyars, 1992);

L. Tekin, Dear Shameless Death (New York: Marion Boyars, 2001).

48 Especially his Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul.(2005), a documentary of the

various popular music genres in Istanbul.

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Art and architecture in modern Turkey

outspoken opponent of the rising Islamic movement in Turkey, clashing fre-

quently with Melih G

okc¸ek, the Islamist mayor of Ankara. G

okc¸ek’s decision

to remove a number of sculptures from Ankara’s public spaces on grounds of

their ‘obscenity’ provoked a strong protest not just from Baykam but from the

entire art establishment, testifying to the fact that public art, like many other

issues, is a contested territory between Islamists and secularists in Turkey.

Yet beyond such publicised ideological battles around public art and public

space, the period since 1980 corresponds to a growing perception of art as a

commodity for private aesthetic consumption and reﬁnement of individual

tastes. The unprecedented expansion of the art market and the proliferation

of private galleries in the post-1980 period have signiﬁcantly transformed the

Turkish art scene. Among the most notable galleries, Baraz (1976), Mac¸ka Sanat

Galerisi (1976), Urart (1982), Galeri Nev (1984) and Tem (1986) have organised

major exhibitions and retrospective shows of the best work in contemporary

Turkish art. Galeri Nev’s publication of numerous high-quality art books,

catalogues and monographs, as well as the art/architectural publications of

major banks such as

Is¸ Bankası and Yapı Kredi Bankası and of private institu-

tions such as Yapı End

ustri Merkezi (Centre for Building Industry) collectively

represent a dramatic leap in the making of a high-quality contemporary artis-

tic/architectural culture in Turkey. The proliferation of art/architecture jour-

nals like Sanat D

unyamız (Our Art World), Boyut (Dimension), Plastik Sanatlar

Dergisi ( Journal of Plastic Arts), Genc¸ Sanat (Young Art), Art D

ecor, Tasarım

(Design) and Arredemento Dekorasyon have also contributed to an increasingly

sophisticated discussion of art and architecture among academics, artists,archi-

tects, critics, intellectuals, students of art and architecture and members of the

more educated general public. Popular magazines for ‘good living’ and ‘home

decoration’ have also proliferated, providing the wealthy urbanites, especially

in Istanbul, with an ambitious (and expensive) programme to aestheticise their

lifestyles and reﬁne their tastes as a way of acquiring elite status.

In architecture, with the demise of the left, the earlier intensely political

discourse of the Chamber of Architects gave way to a reorientation of the

profession towards issues of form and image making in line with the latest

trends in architectural culture at large. There is a hitherto unprecedented

proliferation of glossy publications and new journals of architecture, as well

as of industrial and interior design. Among practising architects, ‘liberation’

from the sterility and monotony of high modernism has been celebrated with

a wide range of formal and stylistic trends, applied primarily to ofﬁce com-

plexes, business centres, commercial structures, hotels and holiday villages.

Among these, Doruk Pamir (b. 1938), an architect with a distinguished career

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