Inventive traditionalism vs. considering tradition: The changing character of the city of Ankara

Abstract

There are different forms of Traditionalism. The most common form is the one that promotes the “idea of having a tradition” itself as a discursive practice. The modus operandi of this form is the reproduction of the “images” considered as having symbolic meanings. Despite the consensus over their “symbolic communication”, those images are deprived of their content that has been accumulated and articulated as a “tradition”. The replacement of the accumulated knowledge, experience and consequently content with the “image” seems to initiate new traditions. It is possible to claim that it is a process of inventing those new traditions by means of “made-up” images of symbolic meanings.

Architect has a definitive position in this process. The profession proposes a dangerous mixture of being a technician lost its authority and identity within the over exhausting construction market, which multitudes the same building image, without content, on one side, and on the other, of having the ultimate responsibility of inventing and reproducing that “made-up images of traditionalism”.

This study investigates the invention and reproduction of that made-up traditions through the transformation of urban morphology and texture of the city of Ankara with respect to the changing political and social atmosphere in Turkey.

Keywords: tradition, traditionalism, Ankara, city, politics