Türk modernleşmesinin çevresel tarihi: batı kaynaklı çevresel söylemlerin, erken Cumhuriyet dönemi kentsel üretim süreçlerine hegemonik etkisi, 1923- 1960

TÜBİTAK SBB Proje01.07.2008Environmental history is a relatively new field through which the processes of urban development in relation to natural environments and environmental discourses are of primacy. In this respect our proposal aims at discovering social and political dimensions of urban-nature dichotomy and their spatializations in the cases of Istanbul and Ankara. The industrial revolution based upon the forces of Enlightenment and such related social restructuring is at the center of our conceptual drive. The Turkish Modernization Project that shaped an original politics circa 1923-1960 and such discursive formations on Turkey’s nation-state policies that unceasingly effected its urban-environmental transformation have been discussed in a comparative manner with its European counterparts. As a result, the discursive formations as well as the metanarrations, which called for social, spatial and environmental metamorphoses are in the scope. In part: e. The economy-politics of Turkey’s Modernity Project in respect to such discursive formations and meta-narrations; f. The methods and the processes of narrations and their implementations in the early Republican Era; g. The Modernist implications and their representations in urban and environmental transformations; h. The ideological mappings and such representations over nature and their spatializations in urban and natural environments will also be studied. Đstanbul and Ankara are two important cities for they experienced an array of international planners and their national counterparts: Henri Prost (1936-1951) and Adnan Menderes (1950- 1960) in Đstanbul and Lörcher Plan (1924-1925), Jansen Plan (1929-1939) and Yücel-Uybadin Plan (1957-1960) in Ankara are still considered significant for their proposals of original spatializations. In this context, our project examined their urban scale schemes and implications, their discursive formations and spatializations in respect to their perceptions over nature and natural environments. In this process of interpretation national and international primary sources have been scanned, documented, and classified for making an international database for further academic works, including articles on Turkey’s environmental history. In part, the international designers/planners’ original documents still need further explorations and thus the study have made an extensive archival search in designated centers, libraries and state archives. For making a comparative analysis, international sources are as crucially imperative as the national ones. For this purpose, the project was to establish an academic link with those of similar institutions in Europe. The TUDelf’s Delft School of Design (DSD), a respectful research institution, took a part in the project and supported our international agenda at large