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Architectures of Domination? The Sacralisation of Modernity and the Limits of Ottoman Islamism

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Neo-Ottoman Imaginaries in Contemporary Turkey

Part of the book series: Modernity, Memory and Identity in South-East Europe ((MOMEIDSEE))

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Abstract

This chapter examines Turkey’s recent transformation in the domain of representative state architecture. The emphasis is on Istanbul and Ankara—once the showcase of Kemalist nation-building and its secular republican tenets—focusing on the "grand projects" of urban transformation, mosques, palaces, and public buildings, which have effectively challenged the city’s modernist appearance. All these projects have been framed by the desire of consecutive AKP governments to insert into Turkey’s supposedly secular cityscapes structures that represent an Ottoman-Islamist identity proposal. In addition to these "sacralising" projects, the nation-builders of the AKP also seek to replace, or at least symbolically diminish the built environment of the early Kemalist republic and its messages of secularist modernity. The chapter examines the discursive dimension of this re-sacralisation of secular spaces in the speeches of President Erdoğan, while it discusses the "ritual economy" that makes mosque-building a central node in Turkey’s current regime of neoliberal authoritarianism.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Sultan’s mosques (selatin camii) are large mosques built and financed with the private funds of a sultan (Özdemir 2012). Istanbul’s classic sixteenth-century mosques (Sultanahmet, Süleymaniye, Fatih, Valide) are sultan’s mosques. Many of the new representative mosques of the AKP era copy the style of these mosques and pose as if they were sultan’s mosques, even though they are built either with state or private funds.

  2. 2.

    The square was renamed after the coup attempt in 2016 as the impossibly worded “15 Temmuz Kızılay Milli İrade Meydanı” (15 July Red Crescent National Will Square).

  3. 3.

    Öner Tokcan was one of the star architects of the Ankara municipality under Melih Gökçek, also responsible for the North Ankara Mosque Complex discussed later. Cf. http://www.gelisimmimarlik.com.tr/hakkimizda/. Accessed on 12 May 2021.

  4. 4.

    All direct quotes, whether citations or interview transcripts, were translated by the author.

  5. 5.

    The block of flats under construction in the background is located in the lower-middle class neighbourhoods of Demetevler and Yenimahalle. From the vantage point of Hacıbayram, these neighbourhoods look actually even more dense and dominated by concrete than they are in reality.

  6. 6.

    An animation of the project can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzXZpU0X4Sc (Accessed on 12 May 2021). Note the juxtaposed layers of the musical backdrop, which combine a “sufi”-style instrumental introduction with a more Western melodical structure.

  7. 7.

    The first two largest mosques are the Kocatepe Mosque completed in the 1980s and the more recent Ahmet Hamdi Akseki Mosque on the campus of the Presidency of Religious Affairs, Diyanet.

  8. 8.

    Ironically, like the republican nationalist historiography of Ankara, the Islamists also efface non-Muslim communities from the city’s memory (Kezer 2017).

  9. 9.

    The new Atatürk Culture Centre was planned by Murat Tabanlıoğlu, the son of the original architect Hayati Tabanlıoğlu. This compromise solution is indeed surprising, as the contestations around the AKM were particularly polarised and a visible compromise is usually not part of the AKP’s mode of politics.

  10. 10.

    The mosque’s planner, Şefik Birikiye, is a Brussels-based architect and real estate developer who also designed the Presidential Complex in Ankara.

  11. 11.

    Mosques which are used for state functions (i.e. state funerals) are often referred to as ‘protokol cami’, i.e. “mosques for state protocol”.

  12. 12.

    While the building materials are of a high quality, the execution of details seems to be lacking craftsmanship. After I told a security guard that I had studied architecture, he asked me, “Is it normal that such a new building starts leaking everywhere? You just need a gentle rain, and nothing stays dry. They have spent so much money on this, I don’t understand why this happens.”

  13. 13.

    Considering that the mosque’s inauguration was an international event attended by political and religious leaders from Muslim majority countries, the Çamlıca Mosque can also be read as a claim to dominance in the Muslim world.

  14. 14.

    Due to its size, and the distance between its components, none of which are very monumental taken by themselves, the complex does not feel overwhelming. In fact, it cannot be grasped in its full dimensions except from a sizeable distance, whereupon it merely appears like a collection of random buildings.

  15. 15.

    This is no coincidence. The architect, Şefik Birikiye, often referred to as the “Architect of New Turkey”, first became known in Turkey in the 1990s with the Klassis Hotel in Istanbul Silivri. With its “neo-classical” fantasy architecture, it was a major departure from the overwhelmingly modernist architectiural language of hotels prevalent in Turkey until then (Yilmaz 2015).

  16. 16.

    Alternatively, the pomp and circumstance of the Külliye could also be understood as the magnanimous invitation of a sultanic ruler to his subjects to partake of the treasures of his own property, although this is not the ethos I felt.

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Acknowledgement

I express my gratitude to our editors Catharina Raudvere and Petek Onur, Ipek Yosmaoğlu (Northwestern University), and Ebru Soytemel (Aston University) for their comments and contributions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Venice, Italy

    Kerem Öktem

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  1. Kerem Öktem
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Correspondence to Kerem Öktem .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Catharina Raudvere

  2. Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Petek Onur

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Öktem, K. (2023). Architectures of Domination? The Sacralisation of Modernity and the Limits of Ottoman Islamism. In: Raudvere, C., Onur, P. (eds) Neo-Ottoman Imaginaries in Contemporary Turkey. Modernity, Memory and Identity in South-East Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08023-4_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08023-4_5

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-08022-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-08023-4

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