Ankara City Gates

KADİR YAVUZ EMİROĞLU YAVUZ KADİR

STANDING UNDER METAPHORS OF POWER: ANKARA CITY GATES

A Master’s Thesis

STANDING UN STANDING by

KADİR YAVUZ EMİROĞLU

POWER OF METAPHORS DER

Department of

Political Science and Public Administration

İhsan Doğramacı Bilkent University

Ankara Bilkent

July 2019 University 2019 University

To Nurdan and my Family

And to the Oddness of the Earth… STANDING UNDER METAPHORS OF POWER: ANKARA CITY GATES

The Graduate School of Economics and Social Sciences

İhsan Doğramacı Bilkent University

KADİR YAVUZ EMİROĞLU

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS

THE DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE AND PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION İHSAN DOĞRAMACI BİLKENT UNIVERSITY ANKARA

July 2019

ABSRACT

STANDING UNDER METAPHORS OF POWER: ANKARA CITY GATES

Emiroğlu, Kadir Yavuz M.A. Department of Political Science and Public Administration Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Alev Çınar

July 2019

This thesis examines Ankara City Gates in terms of how they metaphorically reproduce a mode of subjecthood, a cultural citizenship corresponding to the understanding of citizenship of the AKP and the state, of which Melih Gökçek, former metropolitan mayor of Ankara is a representative. Doing so, it observes and analyzes these city gates as they function to reproduce the above-mentioned mode of subjecthood, a cultural citizenship whose substance represents an Ottomanist, nationalist, Islamist, neoliberal ideological mélange. The case of Ankara City Gates is analyzed by taking the city gates as textual material, looking at Gökçek’s statements on these structures, considering various instances of public response and comparing this original gate-building practice to various experiences of gate-building in other Anatolian municipalities. Location of the city gates, and how they are placed in relation to the city (e.g. presence of a police control point near the gates) are interpreted to see if they constitute a newer sense of dominion in Ankara. This observation leads this study to observe that Ankara City Gates function to draw new boundaries to Ankara. Religious, national, historical references (e.g. Seljuk Stars, Turkish flags, Mevlana statutes), material qualities (e.g. building materials of these gates) are interpreted with regards to another metaphorical function of these structures: Ideological spolia. It is a practice of selectively attaching elements to represent how the ideology of the AKP imagines, envisions, marks their dominion, the area where the subjectified citizens enter to. These two functions constitute a final one, which enabling the city gates to subjectify citizens of Ankara, rendering them under-standers, citizen subjects who stand under the city gates.

Keywords: Ankara, Citizenship, Metaphors, Space and Politics, Subjectification

ÖZET

GÜÇ METAFORLARININ ALTINDA DURMAK: ANKARA ŞEHİR KAPILARI

Emiroğlu, Kadir Yavuz M.A. Siyaset Bilimi ve Kamu Yönetimi Bölümü Tez Danışmanı: Prof. Dr. Alev Çınar

Temmuz 2019

Bu tez çalışması Ankara Şehir Kapılarını, bu yapıların metaforik olarak bir tabiiyet kipini, Ankara Büyükşehir Belediyesi eski Başkanı Melih Gökçek’in temsilcisi olduğu Ak Parti ve devletin vatandaşlık anlayışına tekabül eden bir kültürel vatandaşlık durumunu nasıl yeniden ürettiği sorusu üzerinden ele almaktadır. Böylece bu çalışma, bahse konu kapılar üzerinden, Osmanlıcı, milliyetçi, İslamcı, neoliberal bir ideolojik karışımın içeriğini belirlediği bir tabiiyet kipini, yani bir kültürel vatandaşlık durumunu gözlemlemiş ve analize tabi tutmuştur. Şehir kapılarını bir metin olarak kabul ederek, Gökçek’in bu yapılar üzerine sunduğu ifadelere bakarak, kamuoyu tarafından verilen çeşitli cevapları değerlendirerek ve bu özgün kapı-inşa etme eylemini diğer Anadolu belediyelerindeki çeşitli kapı-inşa tecrübeleriyle kıyaslanmıştır. Böylece, şehir kapılarının konumları, şehirle ilişkili olarak yerleştirilme şekilleri (örneğin kapıların yakınında bir polis kontrol noktasının bulunması) yorumlanmış ve bu yapıların Ankara’da yeni bir hakimiyet alanı oluşturup oluşturmadığı sorgulanmıştır. Bu gözlem de bu tez çalışmasını Ankara Şehir Kapılarının Başkent’e yeni sınırlar çizme fonksiyonuna sahip olduğu çıkarımına ulaştırmıştır. Dini, milli, tarihi referanslar (örneğin Selçuklu Yıldızı, Türk Bayrağı, Mevlâna heykeli), materyal özellikler (örneğin yapım malzemeleri) yorumlanarak ikinci bir metaforik fonksiyon, ideolojik spolia kullanımı gözlenmiştir. Bu fonksiyon dahilinde, seçici bir şekilde yerleştirilmiş belli ögeler, Ak Parti’nin ideolojisinin, hakimiyet alanlarını, yani tebaalaştırılan vatandaşların girdiği alanı nasıl tahayyül edip işaretlediğini göstermektedir. Bu iki fonksiyon nihai ve üçüncü bir fonksiyonu ortaya koymaktadır. Bu da şehir kapılarının Ankara’daki vatandaşları tebaalaştırmaya tabii tutması, onları kapının altında duran birer tebaa üyesi vatandaş haline getirmesidir.

Anahtar Kelimeler: Ankara, Mekân-Siyaset, Metaforlar, Tebaalaştırma, Vatandaşlık

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to start this series of acknowledgements with an impossible one. I am deeply grateful to Prof. Alev Çınar for her wise guidance and clement patience in supervising the novice author of this master’s thesis. It would not be possible to pursue such research objectives without Prof. Çınar’s encouragement and academic expertise. I also would like to state the excitement and honor I felt by having defended my thesis before a jury consisting of two figures I admire. I cannot express my gratitude enough towards Assoc. Prof. Bülent Batuman and Prof. Savaş Zafer

Şahin for their invaluable comments and suggestions.

As the witty Picasso line suggests, nothing is made in the duration in which it is made. This thesis took approximately a year’s work, but I am indebted to ones who carried me to the moments I wrote this piece. I actually have written this thesis in 5 years plus a year. I started to seriously deal with questions of how power and politics work after I met Assistant Professor Meral Uğur Çınar in an introductory course to

Political Science. I thank her with my all heart and mind, as she taught me in becoming a good student and a good person. I also would like to thank Dr. John

William Day for his eye-opening course, and heart-warming personality. I am also thankful to my professors, Dr. Selin Akyüz, Assoc. Prof. İlker Aytürk, Assoc. Prof.

Nedim Karakayalı, Assistant Prof. Luca Zavagno and Prof. Pınar Bilgin for teaching me to think, read and write in a critical manner. I thank Gül Ekren for her weariless watch over the department, and the cheer she sparked in the lives of the students. As a receiver of the BİDEB (Directorate of Science Fellowships and Grant Programmes)

iii

2210/A scholarship, I would like to thank TÜBİTAK (The Scientific and

Technological Research Council of Turkey) for the support provided during my master’s studies.

In an emotional note, I am obliged to thank my friends. It would not be possible to write this thesis without the support of Hamdusena Eşrefoğlu, Cihan Eryonucu,

Ertuğrul Altınözen, Musa Bendaş, Selahaddin Harmankaya, Ahmed Halid Kayhan,

Burak Aydemir, Furkan Ün, and, Furkan Işın. There is a special place in the Bilkent

Campus. It is wherever my office folk sits down and work along with laughter and warm conversation. I am grateful to Ayşe Durakoğlu, Fatma Nur Murat, and Ozan

Karayiğit for the great adventure during the two years of master’s.

I would like to state my thankfulness to my family, my beautiful extended family. I am grateful for having Mehmet Emiroğlu as my father, Saliha Cirit as my mother.

These two figures made everything possible for me to experience the festivity around the Earth. I thank and kiss in cheeks of my brother Ali Bahadır, and my sister Zeynep

Aybike, and my brother-in-law Mehmet Tarık. I also would like to thank my mother and father in law, Kevser and Necati Tatar for accepting me into their family, and further decreasing the stress of writing a master’s thesis.

Lastly, and mostly, I thank my soulmate, the person who laughs at my uncanny jokes about my thesis and everything else in the universe, Nurdan. Without her presence, I would only stand under the city gates of Ankara, and not write a single word about them.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSRACT ...... i ÖZET...... ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ...... v LIST OF FIGURES ...... vi CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION ...... 1 CHAPTER II: MASTER’S STUDENT’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY: A LITERATURE REVIEW...... 12 2.1 Conceptual Frame ...... 14 2.1.1 Formation of Citizen-Subjects and Cultural Citizenship ...... 14 2.1.2 Metaphors: A Theory of Imagination and Reason ...... 20 2.1.3 Space: Another Theory of Imagination and Reason ...... 27 2.1.4 A Tale of Two Functions: Ideological Spolia and Boundary Drawing ..... 30 2.2 Background and the Ideological Context of Ankara City Gates ...... 36 2.2.1 Modern Gates of Ankara...... 36 2.2.2 Ideological Basis of the AKP ...... 38 2.2.3 A Myth of Gate-Building: Yenikapı and Murat the 4th ...... 42 2.2.4 An Ideological Source Revisited: Evliya Çelebi’s Gates ...... 44 2.3 Political Use of Space in Turkey ...... 49 CHAPTER III: FORTIFYING A CITY WITHOUT WALLS: AN ANALYSIS ..... 54 3.1 Standing Under and Under-standing Gates ...... 57 3.2 What a Mayor Talks About When He Talks About Gates ...... 73 3.3 Angry Architects and Confused Citizens: A Sketch of Public Response ...... 82 3.4 Lives and Deaths of Gates in Anatolia: A Story of Dissemination ...... 89 CHAPTER IV: CONCLUSION ...... 99 REFERENCES ...... 105

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1 Locations of Ankara City Gates...... 57

Figure 2 Konya Road City Gate ...... 59

Figure 3 Samsun Road City Gate ...... 62

Figure 4 Istanbul Road City Gate ...... 65

Figure 5 Eskisehir Road City Gate ...... 67

Figure 6 As the Author Sees a Construction Project “NORTHGATE” ...... 70

Figure 7 As the Author Goes through the Airport Road City Gate...... 70

Figure 8 Virtual Boundaries of Gökçek's Ankara ...... 71

Figure 9 "Yaren Gate" built in Çankırı (Çankırı Belediyesi) ...... 90

Figure 10 One of the two Kütahya Gates (Ayhan, 2018) ...... 91

Figure 11 Göynük Gate with a piece of inscribed advice from Akşemseddin ...... 93

Figure 12 Sultan Abdulhamid Han Gate of Haymana being destructed ...... 96

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

In March 2014, just before the municipal elections at the end of the month, Melih

Gökçek, the former mayor of Ankara, organized an opening ceremony for the five city gates he erected on main highways of the Turkish capital city. The festive event was open to public and included a firework show and even a concert given by late

Murat Göğebakan, an artist of Anatolian Rock genre. In the ceremony, Gökçek declares the opening day as “one of the most important days of our Ankara,” and goes on describing the “magnificence” of these structures. With a heavy reference to

Ottoman-Seljuk history, Gökçek finishes off his speech by putting forth how the legacy of city’s history was conflated with steel, “which is the modern technique of construction” (Habertürk, 2014). In another interview conducted for the elections, he suggests that these gates will enable the municipality to “greet visitors” with their design, ornaments, and compatibility with the rest of Ankara’s aesthetics and modernity (2014). The former metropolitan mayor of Ankara seems to believe in the importance of building gates for the capital city. Gates matter in Gökçek’s Ankara.

Unlike a pragmatic use of city gates in the history of Anatolia and other geographies, in the 21st century Ankara, gates described by Melih Gökçek have almost nothing tangible attached to them, they are not parts of a fortification around the city literally marking the entrances. In modern standards, they are not open to touristic visits, they do not let pedestrians to pass over the highway. While in the 17th Century Ankara,

Evliya Çelebi suggests that the commander would have been killed off if he had passed outside the gates (2005, p. 521); Ankara’s new city gates do not bear such a consequence, and they solely “greet” the passerby. However, ultimately Ankara City

Gates are material entities that exist in the city, interact with ones standing under, bear stories and symbols, and more importantly, carry out metaphorical functions implying a sense of entering into a dominion and reinforcing the presence of the state.

In this paper, the research problématique is born out of this somewhat counter- intuitive, antinomic gaze at these city gates, which were built amidst a turbulent political atmosphere, deprived of a practicality but simultaneously open to a deeper political-metaphorical reading. What these gates represent and reproduce as spatio- metaphorical structures; how the relationship between the citizens and the AKP and the Turkish State is established through these structures are the main research questions driving this project. Therefore, this paper is in an attempt to locate and understand the modern city gates of Ankara in terms of their metaphorical functions leading them to reproduce an understanding of a cultural citizenship (Ong, 1996). As cultural citizenship is a concept to refer to the negotiation between the state and the citizen regarding the cultural substance of citizenship (p. 738), Ankara City Gates present us the opportunity to see how the understanding of citizenship of the AKP and the Turkish State is represented and reproduced in a spatio-metaphorical level.

Rather than legally positioning the citizens in the Turkish polity, Ankara City Gates puts forth an ideological-historical narration and a sense of metaphorical dominion where the citizenship is recognized and favored. This way, as Ong’s conception suggests, citizenship is formed through a subjectification process. Ankara City Gates function to subjectify citizens of Ankara -thus Turkey- into a certain cultural

2 citizenship. Ünlü (2018) for instance recognizes this type of formation of citizenship with another metaphorical negotiation process between the state and the citizens.

Using the metaphor of “contract”, Ünlü argues that there is a “Turkishness Contract” imposed upon the citizens of Turkey around the cultural and ideological identity of

Turkishness. Although it also includes a legal aspect of citizenship, the cultural substance implied by Ünlü’s metaphor of “Turkishness Contract” can be read along with the Turkishness and the Ottomania, and the Islamism which are reproduced as a conflated cultural substance to the citizenship put forth by Ankara City Gates. This type of formation of citizenship as producing boundaries to citizenship which is both observable in Ünlü’s work and in the case of Ankara City Gates can be also discussed in relation to the concept of “citizenship regimes.” Citizenship is a concept used to define how boundaries of citizenship in a particular state is drawn (Jenson,

2007, p. 55-56). The tricky part in understanding how citizenship regimes conceptually relate to Ankara City Gates is to understand that citizenship does not only operate in a legal domain. As Ankara City Gates, in a totalistic-obliging manner, greet each motorized citizen into a cultural citizenship whose substance is marked and reproduced in parallels to the ideological mélange of the AKP, a certain type of citizenship regime is constructed around these structures. Ankara City Gates in drawing boundaries, and marking these boundaries with an ideological-historical narration, they actually put forth an understanding of citizenship, both its cultural substance and how it is making the citizen subjects enter into its dominion.

The mode of citizenship reproduced through metaphorical functions of the city gates positions the state hierarchically advantaged, and the citizen under the city gate, and thus under the state. In other words, Ankara City Gates open to a research venue where the relationship between the state and the citizen, and the understanding of

3 citizenship as a result of this relationship can be observed through different metaphorical functions served by the city gates. Through these so-called metaphorical functions, individuals are recruited into a subjecthood, called out to be members of a cultural citizenship corresponding to what the AKP and the Turkish

State conceives as citizenship, simply by standing under these gates, understanding them, and -in the belief of the author of this thesis, poetically- becoming under- standers. This position of being an under-stander, however, does not correspond to an actual practice of standing, or idly experiencing the city gates’ material/metaphorical presence. On the contrary, the actual mode of experiencing these structures is a mobile, motorized one. The citizen who is rendered under- stander is metaphorically standing under the gate, thus under the builder of it. The under-stander has to understand Ankara City Gates without the ability to literally stand under these structures due to the extremely fast mobility taking place around these structures. Rather, the under-standers of Ankara involuntarily enter into the dominion of the state whose boundaries are metaphorically drawn by these city gates.

These poetic processes of subjectification and the formation of the substance of the cultural citizenship are constantly marked by the ideological mélange of the AKP because the city gates of Ankara are made to bear a conflation of ideological patterns, conceptions, and symbols referring to a multi-faceted Ottomanist- nationalist-Islamist-neoliberal ideological basis. Ankara City Gates provides the observers with an occasion that is involuntary, mandatory for the citizen to experience. The under-stander does not have the opportunity to avoid metaphorically standing under the city gates of Ankara since these structures are located on main highways of the city. Their imposing, totalistic presence within the city and the polity constitutes a significant chance to observe how an individual is called into a mode of

4 citizenship whose substance is reproduced in accordance with the conflated ideological basis of the AKP, and the Turkish State.

Noting that most of Gökçek’s -thus the AKP’s- traces in the city will be politically contested with the arrival of the new mayor from the main opposition party, the Chp, the presence of Ankara City Gates becomes more meaningful. Each second they exist within the city and the Turkish polity, they remind and reproduce a cultural citizenship whose substance is filled by with concepts, symbols, and values from the

AKP’s multi-faceted, Nationalist-Islamist-Ottomanist-Neoliberal ideology. The citizen who stands under the gate, under-stander is invited into a mode of subjecthood that is Ottoman-Seljuk, Muslim and Turk at the same moment. Seljuk stars, Mevlana statues, patterns constructing the concept of Ottoman-Seljuk architecture1 are all components of the subject-forming side of Ankara City Gates. In this way, they put citizens of Ankara in a subjecthood in line with the understanding of citizenship of the AKP and the Turkish State. Until the moment these city gates, if ever, are abolished, they will remain political-metaphorical structures; and more dramatically, their death will be birth of another political-metaphorical intervention into space by another actor who is becoming a part of the Turkish State and thus pursuing to form a new cultural citizenship in line with its ideological basis.

This thesis further shapes its argument around the metaphorical functions of the gates which ultimately construct, reproduce a power relation schema that results in calling the citizens into a particular mode of cultural citizenship corresponding to the

1 “A fictitious label,” “at best anachronistic to speak of” Ottoman-Seljuk style, Batuman (2017) suggests, since Ottoman Empire and Seljuks are not regarded to be constituting a continuity in terms material culture and architecture (p. 161, 194). The constructed term can be taken into consideration as an investment in meaning to represent the conflated nature of the ideological basis of the AKP, and the Turkish State.

5 understanding of citizenship of the AKP and the Turkish State. Therefore, the paper answers the research question by discovering specific metaphorical functions of the gates which are boundary-drawing, use of what I refer to as ideological spolia2, and, ultimately, subjectification. Boundary drawing is the initial connotation of building gates to a city. The builder -the AKP and the Turkish State- becomes able to draw new boundaries to the dominion which is aimed to be metaphorically seized.

Moreover, metaphorically drawing boundaries also suggests that there is citizenship practice of entrance. The under-standers, the citizens “greeted” by the city gates are involuntarily made to enter into a dominion where a specific mode of cultural citizenship is recognized and favored by the Turkish State. Ankara City Gates primarily calls forth the sense of entrance, as they are gates and located in points that are accepted to be entrance points to the Turkish capital city, therefore this connotation of entrance is substantiated with how drawing of boundaries help to form a dominion and the cognitive space for a specific mode of cultural citizenship to take place.

Following the formation of the boundaries of the dominion, gates function to enable the builder to use ideological spolia so that the dominion can be ideologically marked and a selective ideological-historical narration that is empowered by various ideological sources can be presented to the citizens. Ideological spolia is a concept produced by the author of the thesis, who benefits from the original concept of spolia theorized by historians of Roman Empire, to refer to use of ideological symbols,

2 Spolia is Latin word for “spoils” or “anything ‘stripped’ from someone or something”, and is a concept used to refer to an architectural practice which is simple reusing materials in the making of a new structure (Kinney, 2006, p. 233). It is a concept mostly used by researchers of history of Roman Empire and architecture. It should be noted down that spolia is also used in modern sense to denote the reusing of materials in new structures, the concept of “ideological spolia” is invented to analytically position Ankara City Gates reusing ideological elements from different sources. The original conception is more of creativity, while ideological spolia is used to define a banal reuse of ideological borrowings.

6 patterns, and concepts in the making of a new structure. As a result of these two metaphorical functions, Ankara City Gates puts forth an ultimate metaphorical function, which is interpellating3 the citizens of Ankara, inviting them into a specific mode of subjecthood, a cultural citizenship which is marked, narrated by an

Ottomanist-nationalist-Islamist-neoliberal ideological group, and ultimately the state.

In this thesis, gates open up a refined, if not new, way of studying Turkish politics.

Although still operating in similar domains, where the research is bound to study, for instance, Islamist politics, gates are entirely a product of ideological construction processes aiming to shape power relations between the state and the citizen. This means that gates as objects of study enable the researcher to look beyond mainstream developments of Turkish Politics, elections, system crisis, polemics. Studying gates points at a new level of understanding the relationship between the state and the subject. At this new level, political figures, events become secondary. The primary research object is at the metaphorical level, it reveals itself in studying beneath what the power-holders and the powerless of the polity is building and experiencing in the space, which is inevitably social and political. Therefore, this thesis project finds it meta-rationale in this manner of studying Turkish Politics and believes in the possibility of at least shedding a thin beam of light to inner workings of power relations that continuously put forth, reproduce a mode of subjecthood, a cultural citizenship.

3 Although this concept of “interpellation” is discussed at length in following sections, it is a concept used by Althusser to define how the individual is invited, “recruited” into a mode of subjecthood. The French thinker gives the example of a policeman shouting out “Hey you!”. As the individual turns back and looks at the policeman, he/she is interpellated (2014, p. 191). This thesis draws on the Althusserian notion of interpellation to explore the function of the gates as interpellating the citizen- subject.

While this new vista is discovered, the prior distinction to be made in terms methodology is to avoid mistaking data collection for analysis. It becomes vital to this study because perceiving the gates in modern Ankara entails a micro-analytical moment. Although it is a complication, this aspect of studying gates actually foreshadows the metaphorical value of the structures. As the “data” is collected around these gates, the metaphorical schema reveals itself to the citizen subject, renders him/her an under-stander. Mere collection of data is nearly impossible, therefore outlining methodology of the thesis becomes a fundamental task in order to occupy a critical point where the researcher can put the gates as objects of study.

This thesis project designs the data collection as a two-fold process. On the one hand, gates of the modern Ankara are put at the center. Gates themselves comprise an indispensable part of the data collected. In order to inquire into the gates, visual data is collected. Visual data is composed of photographs of the gates, maps taken from an online database (Google Maps), project files from the contractor firm, municipality advertisement videos, and flyers. In addition to the visual data collected around Ankara City Gates, textual data is collected in order to be able to conduct a full-fledged textual analysis around these urban structures. Although the design process does not entail a wide public discussion, starting from the 1970s, there have been various design competitions for “urban gateways” in the Turkish capital city.

The change in the participant projects and the ultimately-realized gates actually constitutes a textual data. In the second phase, as the absence of the discourse of designers partly requires the thesis to do so, this research piece collects Gökçek’s remarks on the gates in different media, such as newspaper and online news outlet interviews-reports, recording of talk-shows. It also collects textual material to exemplify the public response to the construction of the gates such as columns,

8 online news commentaries, a press release made by a conglomerate of architects’ associations. Lastly, this thesis collected both textual and visual data on various gate- building practices experienced in different parts of Anatolia under municipal authorities belonging to the AKP.

In order to analyze the data collected via different means, the fundamental method of analysis is textual analysis. Although it has certain methodological derivatives while taking different objects as textual entities (a slightly different textual approach is taken towards a historical book in comparison to an architectural structure, e.g. a gate), the main target of analysis is always textualized. Textual analysis is, in the simplest of terms, a scientific effort to understand how a text might be interpreted by an audience (McKee, 2003, p. 1). In this first-page-text-book definition, the most significant part is the concept of text. McKee once again points at the “post- structural” aspect of what text is. Rather than taking only movies, books, magazines as text, “production of meaning” can be observed in any entity where there are differences in value judgments, the existence of abstract and concrete things, relationships, reason, and “seeing things” (p. 5-9). As the object of study of this thesis is mainly material structures, gates on the main highways of Ankara, this approach is established to regard them as texts, and to understand how meaning is produced through them.

As Hartley rightfully argues “what people, individually and in collectivities both formal (institutional) and informal (cultural), said and thought, was also a material phenomenon with material effects,” (2006, p. 72), this thesis regards both material- architectural and traditionally “textual texts” as worthy of textual analysis. As Geertz

(1973), for instance, takes the Balinese cock-fighting as a text (p. 449), Ankara City

Gates can also be studied with the same approach. In conducting textual analysis, one thing to always bear in mind is to dismiss the concept of an ultimate or a superior interpretation, thus a reality. However, it does not mean that the textual analysis conducted in this thesis is utterly relativistic. Rather, Geertz’s concept of thick description further enables the observer to understand “… what goes on” (p. 16).

This question of what is going on does not call forth a descriptive analysis, but an interpretive one taking both context and the thickness of the social phenomena. This emphasis on the thickness of the data collected around Ankara City Gates is a relativistic manner of data collection and analysis. Both denying a realist-positivist and a relativistic approach towards the gates and the text around these gates, this thesis is after an interpretation that is put in the right context, using the right analytical tools and only claiming to provide “a plausible interpretation amongst many”.

Dealing with how to textually analyze the collected data, the author benefits from a vast literature that acts sometimes as a mélange of methodological applications, and sometimes as a corpus where theory and practice get along. In especially analyzing the gates of modern Ankara and the textual data accumulated around them, certain works attempting to conduct a discourse analysis by studying both architectural structures and the discourse produced around them are taken as models. Although this thesis work is built on textual analysis and does not qualify as, or include critical discourse analysis, the methodological contributions of works that combine critical discourse analysis with urban studies (Cameron, 2003; Fairclough, 2003; Yacobi,

2010) are deeply influential to this study. Moreover, the foundation of the interpretive analysis in this thesis project is built upon theoretical cues from

Gottdiener and Hutchison (2011), as they define “spatial semiotics” and put forward

10 that signs (and with a stretch, metaphors) gain importance in parallel to the rise of motorways and with the pedestrian life is more and more erased from the urban (p.

94). Accordingly, Ankara City Gates are also semiotic, metaphorical structures that are built on highways and open to be experienced mostly in vehicles. This methodological inspiration also resonates in the following sections. A theoretical revelation in line with this observation of the accelerated experience of the

“cityspace” can be found in the works of Boyer (1996). She suggests that the invention of the train, and the accelerated mode of processing the image of the city put forth a newer conception of “city as panorama”. Travel by trains replaced “the old continuum of space and time,” as the distances became easier to overcome (p.

40-41). Boyer implies that the image of the city became a faster experience through the screen -the window- of the train. Ankara City Gates’ locations on the main highways also render these structures parts of an accelerated experience which do not provide a static mode. City gates of Ankara become a part of the panoramic image of the Turkish capital city, the metaphorical functions they entail serve to form new cultural citizens in this motorized, accelerated mode. The image of the gates and the ideological-historical narrative they present are to be analyzed as a part of the cityspace.

CHAPTER II

MASTER’S STUDENT’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY: A

LITERATURE REVIEW

Janet Abu-Lughod starts off her inquiry into what constitutes an Islamic city with a somewhat relevant reference to the tradition of isnad (p. 155, 1987), an Arabic concept used to explain how words of the prophet are transmitted from one person to another, as if they rely on, rest against each other, like a chain. What she is trying to do with the Arabic concept is to put forth a metaphor to suggest that conducting a literature review on the Islamic city is familiar to the tradition of the science of recording words of the Prophet Muhammad. She implies that the works on the

Islamic city are connected to one another, certain notions are conveyed through this connectedness. As much as this is a delicate metaphor for a literature review of the

Islamic city, it also shapes Abu-Lughod’s approach towards how Islamic city has been narrated, studied and designed. Pursuing the notion of the Islamic city, Abu-

Lughod surveys different characteristics of various Islamic instances of urbanism, however, in this important research piece there is almost no place for the gate in

Islamic city, except for the section in which she talks of harats and gates of these quarters (p. 171). Moreover, the notion of Islamic city pursued by Abu-Lughod does not correspond to the city which is allegedly Islamicized by the AKP. While Abu-

Lughod talks of neighborhoods, different judicial divisions of the city, and the cultural label of “Arabo-Islamic” (p. 164); Ankara City Gates tell us a different story

12 of modern Ottomanist-nationalist-Islamist-neoliberal urbanism and monument- building.

Despite all the differences between Abu-Lughod’s Islamic city and the kind of city

Ankara City Gates implies, this thesis project talks to its audience from a point where there are different chains, isnad practices and, in short, pieces of literature constituting a complex problématique that is different from the question of the

Islamic city. It is a complex research task, because Ankara City Gates reside in various social, ideological registers requiring the observer to employ distinct analytical tools. Although these structures are static, they are in a dynamic relation to the Turkish polity, and this dynamism can only be captured using different pieces of literature. Therefore, this thesis project shapes its approach towards what has been written in relation to the metaphor of writing a guide to a galaxy4 which is both wonderful, and terrifying at the very same moment.

Although it is almost impossible to link these distinct and complicated chains to one another, this study should be able to provide a guide to the galaxy where Gökçek’s gates are built, somehow made a part of the Turkish political space and taken as objects of study by a master’s student. Therefore, in the following sections, the conceptual framework of the study, definitions of the concepts to be used in the analysis of Ankara City Gates will be put forth. Then, the background of the idea of building gates in a modern capital city and the literature discussing the AKP’s ideology -to which Gökçek subscribes- will be presented to provide a foreshadowing of the analysis of the gates as representatives of a certain ideological outlook, a

4 A humble tribute to the legacy of Douglas Addams, the person who has written the most magnificent guide for the hitchhikers of any galaxy available.

13 mélange of Ottomanism, nationalism, Islamism and neoliberalism. This part also includes examples from sources of the AKP’s ideology regarding how a modern ideological reading of history can provide a schema of power relations, a mode of subjecthood and an understanding of citizenship in relation to building gates. Then, in order to put this thesis project in the most convenient register and show similar studies, the guide to the master’s student galaxy ends with a discussion of how political -and, metaphorical- use of the Turkish space is problematized by combined literature.

2.1 Conceptual Frame

2.1.1 Formation of Citizen-Subjects and Cultural Citizenship

In a rather classical point of view, one may suggest that Ankara City Gates only stand in a merely materialistic, non-textual way that does not establish a meaningful relationship with the individuals who pass by, under, or through them. When this suggestion is answered with the argument of study by stating that these city gates help to reproduce a certain mode of subjecthood, a cultural citizenship; the response back would probably be an unpleased objection on what constitutes citizenship. For most of the classical vistas that are employed in the analysis of society, politics and other registers citizenship is problematized, the genesis of citizenship is placed in the moment of having rights. For instance, T.H. Marshall (2006) is one of the initiators of these legal, rights-centered outlook. Or, the famous distinction between French and German nationalism and citizenship (Brubaker, 2009) is a comparison made for the sake of the legal realm. In other words, who gets to naturalized by a state is a simple question to see how different theories of citizenship all -explicitly, or

14 implicitly- emphasize the legal attachment citizenship bears. However, this vista is disrupted, contested by different contrasts such as citizenship-as-status vs. citizenship-as-activity (Kymlicka & Norman, 1994, p. 354). More and more researchers and theorists start to many more aspects, spaces citizens experience their special mode -or phase- of subjecthood. Naturally, the classical outlook of citizenship positioning the citizen in a solely legal framework becomes a certain theoretical vista among a sophisticated crowd.

Staeheli (2011) compares the complicated, dynamic state of citizenship theories to the books of “Where is Waldo” (p. 393). More than a decade before Staeheli’s witty

Waldo reference, Kymlicka and Norman (1994) uses the word of “buzzword” for citizenship in an attempt to describe the rise of the use of the concept. As they mean a significant rise including certain inaccurate uses of the concept, the quest to locate and understand the concept of citizenship still continues. A social-spatial inquiry still needs a connection to the concept of citizenship, and access to the complex way citizenship is studied. Especially the way Ankara City Gates are instrumentalized reveals how the power relation between the citizen and the state is reproduced. The under-stander, the individual standing under and trying to understand what Ankara

City Gates mean is invited to be positioned in a mode of subjecthood, a citizenship reproduced by these structures in relation to the ideological basis of the AKP and the

Turkish State. In order to understand how citizenship is reproduced by the city gates built by Gökçek, the relationship between citizenship and subjecthood should be outlined.

In an attempt to answer the question of “Who comes after the subject?” posed by the editors of the book titled likewise, Balibar (1991) establishes an antinomy which defines the passage between the subject and the citizen: “Citizen Subject” (p. 48).

Through this antinomy, he refers to the complication that the citizen is both “above the law” -a position enabling the citizen to legislate-, and “under” it -a position requiring the citizen to abide- (p. 49). Moreover, he believes that the adventure of the subject -thus, the citizen- in Western European political history can be studied as a

“transmutation of subjection, of the birth of the “Citizen Subject” (p. 55). This contrast becomes analytically valuable when Ankara City Gates are taken into consideration. Gates are non-legislative structures that do not have anything to do with attaching or depriving rights to/from citizens. They are, indeed, more of imposing, totalistic structures interpellating citizens of Ankara and Turkey; therefore, they stand in between, they recruit citizens into a new mode of citizenship. In a country in which citizenship is constitutionally -and controversially- initiated,

Ankara City Gates do something beyond reproducing a legal framework, they reproduce a cultural substance to citizenship of those who stand under the city gates.

They continually render citizens as subjects, “citizen subjects” if it is convenient to use Balibar’s concept in a slightly different sense.

The liminal, non-legalistic act that is observed in Ankara City Gates is more thoroughly theorized and analyzed with the concept of “cultural citizenship”. Ong

(1996), as an anthropologist, investigates how citizenship is continuously reproduced within intricate power settings, schemas as a cultural product. She uses the concept of cultural citizenship “to refer to the cultural practices and beliefs produced out of negotiating the often ambivalent and contested relations with the state…” (p. 738).

The ceaseless confrontation between the individual and the state -and its agents, such as Gökçek, and the AKP- is also a cultural process based on a dynamic negotiation.

More so, as this study also argues in the case of Ankara City Gates and its under- standers, citizenship can be taken as “…a dual process of self-making and being-

16 made within webs of power linked to the nation-state and civil society.” (p. 738).

This dual-process, in which citizen becomes both empowered in terms of being part of an ideally egalitarian crowd, and weakened by being subjected to a position of citizenship, can be observed in the moment of under-standing. Noting that it will be clearer in the discussion of how Ankara City Gates interpellates the citizens of

Ankara, it is sufficiently observable that these gates serve to reproduce a certain understanding of citizenship and inviting the citizens of Ankara into it. These gates are built by a political party that draws ideological power from Ottomanism, nationalism, Islamism, and neoliberalism. Therefore, it can be argued that these structures are products of inner workings of a set of power relations. Ankara City

Gates are part of the city of all citizens, they do not exclude any passenger on the highways of Ankara. In their totalistic attitude, city gates of Ankara are representative of the fundamental egalitarian idea of citizenship. However, how

Ankara City Gates are designed to be imposed on the citizens of Ankara brings the subject-forming aspect of these structures.

These gates come with a conflated baggage containing certain ideological-historical power schemas, and naturally, they represent a “web of power”, and impose it to their under-standers. Following what Ong has to say on cultural citizenship as a process of “subjectification as citizens” (p. 740), Ankara City Gates can be argued to function to subjectify citizens, interpellate them, recruit them into a mode of cultural citizenship corresponding to the conception of citizenship of the AKP and the

Turkish State which present an ideological mélange as discussed above. Although

“there are no stable, fixed answers to the questions of where citizenship and citizen- subjects are located,” (Staeheli, 2011, p. 399), Ankara City Gates provide a space in

17 which one can observe how individuals are transformed into citizen subjects, cultural citizens living in the AKP’s Ankara, and ultimately under-standers.

Ankara City Gates functions to provide a substance to the cultural citizenship that is reproduced in correspondence with the ideological inclinations of the Turkish State and the AKP to subjectify their citizens. How this cultural substance of citizenship - subjecthood- is reproduced is also a significant issue to understand Ankara City

Gates. Billig (1995), for instance, uses the metaphor of “flag” in order to explain how nationalism is embedded into the daily life. As distinct processes, nation-building and the preservation of the national identity through various tools involve approaches towards citizenship and subjectification. Billig suggests, “…there is a continual

'flagging', or reminding, of nationhood,” (p. 8) and present a case how this “flagging” can be observed. In a close vista to Billig’s, Ankara City Gates “remind” their under- standers the presence of a dominion -of the AKP, and ultimately the Turkish State-, and a certain mode of cultural citizenship. Bearing various symbols referring different aspects of the AKP’s ideology, drawing boundaries to Ankara, these city gates invite individuals who pass by/through/under to a position of the under- stander, a mode of cultural citizenship that is hierarchically disadvantaged, residing in a dominion reconstructed by the AKP, and the Turkish State.

Ultimately, in the case of Ankara City Gates, the formation of the cultural citizenship corresponding to the ideological codes of the AKP and the Turkish State, is observed through the use of space and the metaphor of gate. This type of effort to position the citizen subject into a certain mode of citizenship can also be observed in the works of political scientists who problematize the negotiation practices of Turkish State in approaching its citizens to position them in a mode of subjecthood. Ünlü, for instance, utilizes the concept of “contract” to refer to the escapade of the Ottoman

18 and then the Turkish State in putting forth and defining a certain form of citizenship.

Although Ünlü’s historical work also includes the citizenship-as-a-status approach, his line of argumentation involves a description of the formation of the cultural citizenship formed by the state. He regards the formation of citizenship as a process of “inclusion and exclusion” (2014, p. 48) and thus as a practice of division, similar to the way Ankara City Gates form a new dominion which gives out the sense of an inside and an outside. The concept of “Turkishness Contract” denotes Ünlü’s final description of the citizenship regime in Turkey. He argues that the state formed a mode of citizenship that imposes a certain way of “…seeing, hearing, feeling, perceiving, and knowing- as well as not seeing, not hearing, not feeling, not perceiving, and not knowing,” (p. 48) in line with the cultural-ideological identity of the Turk. Like the city gates of Ankara, the contract described by Ünlü provides the citizens with a cultural substance in a totalistic manner. Regardless of whether one is ethnically not a Turk, or religiously not a Sunni; the metaphor of contract is as much totalistic as the metaphor of gate. Once the Turkishness contract is signed, a non-

Turk is regarded by the state as a Turk; in the same spirit, once a citizen stands under the city gate, his/her previous identity, ideological positions become susceptible to the totalistic mode of subjecthood, under-standing. The ones who would not sign it, even a Turk would be “outside” of the mode of citizenship, thus deprived of the privileges attached to it. Ünlü’s recent book (2018) delves deeper into this metaphorical outlook towards citizenship and discusses cases of signing and not signing the contract. The fundamental point in Ünlü’s outlook is the observation that the Turkish State puts forth and reproduce a mode of citizenship to each individual within its dominion. After it is put forth, citizen subjects decide to participate or ignore this act of negotiation, of course, with certain repercussions of the decision in

19 mind. Regardless of the totalistic, dividing, and imposing nature of the state’s call to its citizens, it can still be identified as a negotiation process. This type of outlook also benefits this thesis since Ünlü sets precedence for using a metaphor to epitomize how citizenship is formed reproduced by the Turkish State. As he also takes note of the implications of the metaphor he uses -such as the practices of division, totalistic manner of the metaphor of contract-, the concept of “Turkishness Contract” can be used as a contrast to the mode of cultural citizenship which are reproduced by

Ankara City Gates. The fundamental difference, however, the symbolism attached to the city gates of Ankara leads the observers to argue that the citizenship formed by the structures is not only a form of Turkishness, but also of a conflated cultural basis consisting of Ottomanist, nationalist, Islamist, and neoliberal elements.

2.1.2 Metaphors: A Theory of Imagination and Reason

Although the emerging and rich literature on the intersection between the social and the spatial in the Turkish context has indispensable contributions to this particular thesis project, the theoretical basis of this research should be outlined, as the original goal of this thesis is regarding metaphors in relation to the social/spatial. As a new conceptual vista to look at how social is constructed, the concept of metaphor was revisited by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (1980) in a book titled Metaphors We

Live By. Influenced by linguist Micheal Reddy’s concept of “conduit metaphor”

(1979), Lakoff and Johnson argue against the traditional understanding of metaphor, rooted back to Aristotle (p. 153). They suggest that rather than mere linguistic deviations, metaphors have the active capacity to determine how people conceive the world around them and execute certain social actions. Therefore, using a metaphor

20 while communicating is not an example of someone talking with abstractions, but of someone revealing the inner workings of his/her conceptions.

Two linguists assert that various types of metaphors shape our conceptions and social relationships. The fundamental type of metaphors, “conceptual metaphor” has the function to construct social institutions in relation to a metaphor. For instance, the conceptual equation “ARGUMENT=WAR” has the capacity to equate the social practice of argument to fighting a war. This metaphorical relation has social consequences. Lakoff and Johnson warn that one does not talk about an argument in terms of war, but he/she “wins or loses” the argument (1980, p. 4). The way conceptual metaphors work is not descriptive, they do not primarily summarize or express a social phenomenon, but conditions it instead. In a culture in which

“ARGUMENT=WAR” conceptual metaphor is embedded, arguments are conducted quite differently from a culture where another conception of argument is at the heart of the conceptual metaphorical equations.

This insight provided by Lakoff and Johnson led into a research domain where politics is problematized in relation to the concept of metaphors. For instance, Mio

(1997) provides a state of art up to his writing time where metaphors like DISEASE,

CANCER, CONTAINER, MACHINE are studied in political research (p. 124). The premise of these research pieces is mainly based on discourse analysis. As metaphors make sense within a greater network of metaphors, the political discourse becomes open to this sort of analysis. For instance, a political discourse using the

CONTAINER metaphor has a life of its own reinforced with the use of other metaphors of "spillovers, " "power vacuums, " "outbursts, " "explosions, " "leaks," and "seepages" (p. 124). In order to understand to what extent this research domain

21 can reach, Semino and Masci’s (1996) inquiry into Italian politics by studying the metaphorical relation (POLITICS=FOOTBALL) in Berlusconi’s discourse is an adequate example. Noting that Berlusconi is also a significant figure in Italian football, the political leader/ football club president becomes a social, experiential case and stops being a matter of solely discursive. This vista is linked with the approach this thesis project takes towards Ankara City Gates. Rather than only looking for Gökçek’s and other figures’ speeches, interviews, articles, and books, the material/architectural production they initiated or facilitated becomes an important element to analyze their political perspective, the social consequences of their discourse. At the very beginning of this intellectual opening regarding metaphor’s active functions, Lakoff and Johnson share a hunch, “…no metaphor can ever be comprehended or even adequately represented independently of its experiential basis,” (1980, p. 19). This research project is an expansion of the conception of the experimental basis which is initially assumed to be exclusively linguistic and discursive. However, revising this hunch, the author of this thesis suggests that no metaphor of gate in modern Turkish politics can ever be comprehended independently of its material, urban basis.

Lakoff himself has come to the theoretical moment where he admits that any interaction with the material reality surrounding us has a schematic, metaphorical aspect. “Even the most basic actions, like physically grasping an object, have a frame structure that can be observed at the neuronal level,” (2008, p. 23) says Lakoff, suggesting that there is a schema which involves an object and a grasper. He actually hints at the more complex political schemas, frames where political leaders are equated to saviors, heroes/heroines, etc. A political leader in a certain political culture actually exists within a metaphorical map which situates him/her in a position

22 that is metaphorically constituted. For instance, in a culture where the state officials are seen as SERVANTS, a prime minister works in a consciousness which bounds his/her political career to certain social consequences. If a servant fails to serve, or breaks the rules, the ones who are served in this schema has a hierarchically advantaged position. This schematic vista also calls forth a refined outlook of citizenship. As the state is metaphorically put into a position, his/her counterpart the citizen -the subject- is also positioned accordingly. While the metaphor of

SERVANT positions the state -and the representative of the state- in a disadvantaged position regarding the citizens who are “served; the metaphors of COMMANDER or

BUILDER position the state in a higher position with regard to the commanded citizen. This schematic thinking, which assigns roles and positions to the parties in the map of society and state, actually continuously contributes to the formation of citizenship. City gates as metaphorical structures constitute a new testing area for this domain. After all, metaphors are born out the combination of reason and

“imagination” (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980, p. 193), as Ankara City Gates are.

Moving the intellectual lens to a more political theoretical scale from the linguistic, it becomes more and more vital to consider spatial structures in a metaphorical relation to the formation of citizenship and social-political transformations. Giorgio

Agamben (1998), for instance, starts off his intellectual project to study biopolitics, power and the powerless with a fundamental reference to space. He suggests that the biopolitical paradigm is the camp (p. 181), as this specific spatial entity -and comprehensive metaphor- has the capability to reproduce -and reveal- certain biopolitical power practices, settings. Agamben here though presents a counter- argumentative case to this thesis as he suggests that camp replaces the city as the biopolitical paradigm. In a way, metaphorically, and biopolitically, the city is

23 announced insignificant by the Italian thinker. However, theory-wise, Agamben is pursuing a biopolitical inquiry and does not necessarily refute the conditions of possibility of studying the city in deep relation to the social. The significant fact for this study is that Agamben delves into the two-way use of a spatial entity as a metaphorical tool. Whereas biopolitical arrangements, interventions, and governance practice can generally follow and be expressed by “the camp”; the city and certain urban structures can still be utilized as objects of social scientific study. In this metaphorical usage, the camp both expresses the biopolitical acts upon the powerless, but also it shapes what the biopolitical can entail. More importantly, although in a slightly different way, Agamben too pursues a chance to observe how citizens and non-citizens are formed in metaphorical level. The spatio-metaphorical entity, the camp, serves a metaphorical function to transform refugees into powerless subjects. In a similar way, although Ankara City Gates do not have outright biopolitical consequences, they still operate to form citizen subjects by calling, interpellating the citizens of Ankara -and Turkey- to a particular mode of cultural citizenship that is negotiated between the citizen and the Turkish State, which is the ideologically conditioned by the AKP for the near future.

Another influential study of the spatial opening new ways to understand the social,

Wendy Brown’s (2017) problematization of the recent surge of the act of building walls is in parallels with this thesis project which problematizes the gates of the

Ankara. She argues that walls help to form an “imaginary of intact nationhood,” while they “…dissimulate declining state sovereignty with a spectacle of its rectitude and might,” (p. 104). These arguments about political theory, sovereignty, state power, and subversion all revolve around the spatial structure “wall”, in a way that acknowledges its materiality, spatiality, but also its ability to become a metaphor of

“waning sovereignty” of the modern nation-state. At first, Brown’s use of the wall seems to be an expressive way, which means walls only represent a certain political phenomenon. However, her inquiry into the discourse and act of building walls possesses the hints about how the presence of metaphors and the persistence to build walls along with the use of metaphors shapes and reproduces certain conceptions

(e.g. sovereignty), and problems of the builder (e.g. waning sovereignty). Furthering

Brown’s project, one can study how walls as metaphors engage with the political crisis surrounding them both in terms of expressing those crises and reproducing them. For instance, the Gaza Strip, first of all, represents the ideological standpoint and the understanding of citizenship of the builder, probably a security-based, nationalist, statist mentality. The wall, then, stands in Gaza as a metaphor of this builder’s ideological schemas, positioning the Palestinian subject -and non-citizen- outside the wall. This metaphorical, expressive side of the Gaza Strip is then reinforced by the pragmatic use of it by Israelis to control the mobility, contain a people in a limited space. The metaphorical implications of the wall do not only correspond to but also interact with pragmatic, political consequences. Rendering the

Palestinian an outsider, a refugee, a non-citizen unable to enter the dominion of the state is indeed an act empowers the powerful, rather than mere utterance, or a linguistic nuance. Like Brown analyzes walls which exist throughout the globe both in material and metaphorical forms, Ankara City Gates can also be analyzed in terms of how these gates advantage the builder of them, Gökçek, thus the AKP, and ultimately the state, and position the under-standers within a mode of cultural citizenship whose substance is reproduced in accordance with the ideological standpoint of the builder.

This theoretical path enables this study to consider the modern gates of Ankara in a political-metaphorical vista that can see through the elements of reason and imagination in its objects of study. Rather than only taking a one-way relationship between the gates’ representativeness of the ideology of the AKP and their materiality, gates become active in their presence within the city. Besides expressing an ideological schema, and a mode of citizenship that in line with the AKP’s and the

Turkish State’s conceptions of citizenship. Ankara City Gates also participate in the reproduction process of this schema. Metaphors studied by Lakoff has the ability to shape conceptions they are about, gates as metaphors of power also shape the power relations as they represent them at the very same moment. This schematic thinking is deeply related to the cultural aspect of citizenship. Ankara City Gates’ metaphorical presence connotate with the cultural citizenship, a mode of subjecthood in parallels with the citizenship schema of the AKP and the Turkish State. The builder, the state, builds a gate to invite the under-standers, Turkish citizen-subjects into the dominion.

This paper argues that the metaphor of BUILDER calls forth a metaphor of the under-stander, the citizen who is mandatorily invited to stand under what is built.

Ankara City Gates, which are positioned on highways5 of Ankara participates in the genesis of this metaphorical map. The schematic, metaphorical relation between the builder -the state- and the under-stander gains the ability to shape the understanding of citizenship in Ankara, and, by extension, Turkey.

5 Another case of the metaphor of BUILDER which enables the AKP to argue for successful performance as the government, and to locate itself in a hierarchically advantaged position. This position, in return, shapes and positions the citizenship in Turkey: Citizens using what is built, citizens confronting the cultural baggage (naming of the roads, symbolisms on public structures) of what is built, citizens invited into a new subjecthood by recognizing the state as the BUILDER.

2.1.3 Space: Another Theory of Imagination and Reason

Jumping from metaphors to space, this thesis project has the goal of standing on the point of intersection between these two theoretical revolutions. As metaphors are seen in a new theoretical lens, space itself is also led into a long journey of transformations. Doreen Massey (1992) suggests that the regard of space has been subjected to three phases in a simple sense. Firstly, space was exclusively embraced by geographers, architects, and urban planners. Then this isolationist phase was followed by a transformation in the 1970s which let the concept of space to meet the social. Space was discussed in relation to its genesis, being produced by the social.

Ultimately, “the other side of the coin” was explored and the idea that society was also spatially conditioned started to circulate (p. 70). In this long journey of intellectual epiphanies regarding the relationship between space and society, one of the milestones was Lefebvre’s revolutionary regard of the space as an entity capable of representing and being represented. Another important figure of this domain,

David Harvey simply summarizes what Lefebvre thought of the space by suggesting that he “…insists that we do not live as material atoms floating around in a materialist world; we also have imaginations, fears, emotions, psychologies, fantasies, and dreams.” (2006, p. 279) One surprising aspect of this transformation was the fact that the Marxist lens helped these geographers, city planners to problematize the space as a socially conditioned entity. This Marxist scientific revolution did not only facilitate the Marxist interpretation of the space. One of the fundamental contributions of Lefebvre is his observation that there is a class- hegemonic aspect in the formation of space (1991, p. 10), however, this interpretation of Lefebvre does not have to exclusively be a Marxist one since

27 hegemony can refer to any hierarchic power relation. In a sense, if there can be a class-hegemony in space, other hegemonies, power relations might also be resident.

This theoretical adventure of the spatial becomes more intriguing in relation to the concept of city, and place. Occupying a specific point, and a specific political weight within space, the city is taken as “…the spatial manifestations of deeper societal processes that emerge from multiple levels of activities connected with production, exchange, and exercise of power.” (Malekandathil, 2009, p. 13). This definition of the city leads this study to take the Turkish capital city, Ankara as a manifestation of what has been unfolding in the general political context. Each of the above- mentioned pieces of literature on “neoliberal”, “Islamist”, “Ottomanist”, “nationalist” ideology of the AKP and the political use of space in Turkish political history has a representation in the space, in the city and in specific places. Even in narrations of

Evliya Çelebi, the city becomes a representative, a textual entity to further analyze the power relations in both the time of his writing and the time Seyahatname is transcribed, translated and put into circulation. For instance, Donald (1992) is a pioneer in taking the city as text, and he argues “…attempts to describe Western cities in the 19th and 20th centuries tell us a great deal about ways of understanding modernity … The city has become a sort of metaphor for modernity itself.” (p. 419)

This capability of the city to become metaphors of any broader, less concrete notions such as modernity is another intellectual opening which is parallel to the revolution

Lefebvre (1976, 1991, 2008), Harvey (1989, 2003, 2006; Harvey & Braun, 1996),

Soja (1980, 1996, 2003) and others have started, facilitated and sustained. In this line of thinking, Ankara City Gates, and other historical instances of gate-building, gate- descriptions are taken as research opportunities to understand what metaphorical functions space and spatial structures can serve.

In specifics of this thesis project, in a methodologically selective way, a certain definition of place is taken into account to approach towards Ankara City Gates.

Thomas F. Gieryn’s 3 ground rules to define a place are parsimonious rules to inquire into certain spatial instances. In his own quest, Gieryn sets out to come up with some succinct criteria to define what place is and “to bring together several literatures now rarely connected.” In his three rules, Gieryn puts the location as the first criterion, “a unique spot in the universe.” After locating the place, he takes

“material form” as the second criterion.” Although it becomes a more and more controversial statement with the internet solidifying its base, materiality is an indispensable feature, especially in this study which investigates how certain material entities are used as political metaphors. And connecting these two criteria to a textual manner, Gieryn points out the necessity of an “investment in meaning and value,”

(2000, p. 464-465). By meaning and value, he implies a notion of story, a textual existence in the eyes of the beholders, bystanders, and under-standers.

In a recent book, Gieryn himself puts this ground rules into practice and studies

“truth-spots”, which are places condition people to believe in certain narrations, authorities, and, in short, “truths” (2018). More than location and materiality, the investment in value and meaning, the story of the places seems to be of higher significance in this book. This investment resembles Lefebvre’s account of monumentality, both in terms of what a place, a spatial structure reveals and hides:

“Monumentality … always embodies and imposes a clearly intelligible message.”

Gates, for instance, have certain symbolism attached upon themselves in a quite open, “intelligible” way. However, the monument for Lefebvre is also a spatial instance of a deeper character, “…it hides a good deal more”. “Monumental buildings” such as Ankara City Gates, “…mask the will to power and the

29 arbitrariness of power beneath signs and surfaces…” (Lefebvre, 1991, p. 143). How power is hidden by the monuments brings an observer of the monument, the gates to the question of “What are these structures monuments of?”. A paraphrasing of this question reveals the significance of the concept of metaphors in relation to the analysis of spatial phenomena: What are these structures metaphors of? In a similar manner, keeping in mind the 3 ground rules of Gieryn and now-thriving literature on how space in an active relationship with the social, this thesis project sets out to its intellectual quest of finding out the metaphorical function of spatial structures,

Ankara City Gates. What these gates tell the citizen, what they hide and express metaphorically are central to this thesis project.

2.1.4 A Tale of Two Functions: Ideological Spolia and Boundary Drawing

The argument of this study is based on the premise that Ankara City Gates reproduce a mode of subjecthood that positions the under-stander within a cultural citizenship in parallels with a power relations schema that is resulting from the ideological basis of the Turkish State and the AKP. The question of how this reproduction takes place is answered throughout the thesis by revealing the subject-forming aspect of Ankara

City Gates which is based on two distinct metaphorical functions: Ideological Spolia and Boundary Drawing. By presenting a selective historical narration through symbolism, aesthetic conceptions, and metaphorically drawing new boundaries to

Ankara, these city gates position the under-stander, the citizen subject living in or visiting Ankara in a subjecthood, a position that is hierarchically lower than the builder. This forming of a cultural citizenship and subjectification process based on two metaphorical functions is conceptually at the core of this study.

As it is analyzed in the following chapters, Ankara City Gates are not a mere accumulation of building material, but structures occupying different registers in the political space of Ankara and Turkey. Their relation to the subjects, citizens, inhabitants, under-standers of Ankara and Turkey is fundamentally put into the moment of going through, standing under or under-standing these gates. This moment’s ideological aspect can be best explained by taking Althusser’s notion of

“interpellation” into the center. In doing so, it can be argued that although it takes only seconds to under-stand Ankara City Gates, the AKP’s -thus the Turkish State’s-

“...ideology 'acts' or 'functions' in such a way as to 'recruit' subjects among individuals or 'transforms' individuals into subjects,” (Althusser, 2014, p. 190) in that limited time frame. What Althusser calls this “recruitment” process is

“interpellation”, being called into a state of subjecthood. Ankara City Gates’ material presence becomes a metaphorical, ideological one that represents the AKP’s ideology in a totalistic, continuous basis6. He suggests that “the existence of ideology and the hailing or interpellation of individuals as subjects are one and the same thing,” (Althusser, 2014, p. 191). Ideology, at this moment, is not just a bunch of witty slogans about politics, but a deeper, more expansive, resilient mind frame, a view of life entailing existential categories and schemas. In this line of argumentation, what the AKP and the Turkish State are pursuing can be simply called the goal of ideological survival, not only a financial, electoral one, but a prolonged endurance in an existential, metaphorical place in the minds of the under- standers.

6 While Althusser discusses this process of subjectification, he accentuates the totalistic aspect of it by providing sentences in brackets: “(it recruits them all), (it transforms them all)”. As Ankara City Gates occupy points of mobility that requires the citizens to under-stand these structures, it subjectifies all.

Ankara City Gates, a tool for this process of subjectification, resides over citizens to stimulate a new sense of subjecthood, citizenship with regard to the builders of the gates. Bidet argues that interpellation in the human level is played out as a

“proclamation”, “a promise” between each one of the individuals (2014, p. xxvii).

Gates, built in the middle of the city, can be conceived as an intervention into this interpellation process. It is an intervention into the pact of subjecthood between the citizens and enabling the builders of Ankara City gate to put forth a new mode of interpellation and subjectification.

This subject-forming intervention into space is achieved by two distinguishable but deeply related metaphorical functions of Ankara City Gates. First one is the most obvious connotation of gates is the idea of boundaries, guarding something behind7.

As Ankara City Gates are named as gates, built as gates, and problematized as gates, they impose a sense of boundary from their spot on the betweenness, on the liminal which constitute a blurry line over Ankara. This boundary drawing function of gates is closely linked with subjectification on a theoretical level. Foucault, in later years of his intellectual project, admits or reconsiders his work to be an inquiry into how individuals are made subjects. This reconsideration is followed by outlining of three

“parts” his works consisted of, first “modes of inquiry”, second “dividing practices” and, third, subjectification (Foucault, 1982, p. 777-778). Although subjectification is deemed to be a distinct part of his work, “dividing practices” is a conceptual corridor opening up to a possibility of studying how one is being turned into a subject. The division between the mad and the sane can be also resonated in the division between

7 A linguistic study of Atmaca and Adzhumerova (2010) suggests that there is a camp that the word “kapı” (gate) comes from the verb of “kap-, ‘örtmek’” (to conceal), whereas their own opinion is that it must be assumed there had existed an original suffix of “ka-,” (p. 38). Anyway, ultimately what a gate closes, conceals is an area. Linguistically, gate in Turkish has a strong connotation with the concept of boundaries.

32 the in and out. As gates stand and imply a sense of boundary to the individuals, a dividing practice takes place in an effort to provide a new dominion for the builder.

The closest conceptual discussion for drawing of boundaries in a spatial, urban context is observed in the literature on “enclosure.” Although it is a richly-discussed

(Balaban, 2011; Blomley, 2007, 2008; Hodkinson, 2012) concept to refer to the study the process of “seizure of the commons” rendering a land private by enclosing it (Jeffrey, McFarlane, & Vasudevan, 2012, p. 2), it is actually related to what

Ankara City Gates accomplish by drawing boundaries to subjectify under-standers.

Simply, Ankara City Gates’ presence metaphorically asserts a power setting between the builder and the subject, a citizenship relation between the state and the citizen.

However, the complicated aspect of these structures is revealed when they are observed drawing boundaries and metaphorically marking the dominion of the AKP and the Turkish State. Their relationship with the construction industry and neoliberal aspect of the AKP’s ideological basis produced certain inequalities,

“enclosures”, and ultimately gated-communities (Geniş, 2007; Güzey, 2014;

Kurtuluş, 2011). Despite the fact that this paper does not employ an argumentation reaching out to an analysis of how the AKP and the Turkish State are incorporated into a biopolitical, neoliberal power setting, it is important to see how certain enclosure practices are related to divisions, and boundaries that serve the AKP and the Turkish State to put forth an understanding of citizenship and subjecthood. For instance, in the analysis of Ankara City Gates, certain gates’ closeness to police control points and certain residential projects are taken into account. In this case, boundary drawing is not registered as an enclosure, since it does not render a common good private, but it is deeply related to and expressive of consequences of the neoliberal ideology of the AKP. On the metaphorical level, however, the

33 boundaries drawn by the presence of the city gates constitute a new Ankara, a dominion in which the subjectified citizens are welcome.

In a discussion of the concept of enclosure Vasudevan, McFarlane, and Jeffrey

(2008) put forth that “geographies of enclosure” can be investigated with “four preliminary axes: subjectification, legal violence, the colonial present, and the politics of representation,” (p. 1642). Apart from the legal violence and the colonial present, which take place in different Turkish spatial settings but not around Ankara

City Gates, boundary drawing corresponds to the act of enclosure on a metaphorical level, while subjectification is performed in a wider sense. Further, in a standpoint where one can see the literature on the enclosure and the case of Ankara City Gates,

“politics of representation” can actually be observed in correspondence to the second metaphorical function of Ankara City Gates: A selective historical narration, or in this paper’s words, use of ideological spolia.

The partly-invented analytical concept, ideological spolia comes from a close reading of another literature neighboring/intersecting inquiries into politics, society, history, and space. This particular literature entails problematization of gates belonging to another time frame, Roman period. Historians of the Roman Empire invested their intellectual resources to understand how space was managed and instrumentalized for ideological ends of the state. The concept of spolia comes from this type of academic work, where historians studying the Roman Empire defined spolia as an act of attaching older parts from various structures to a newly-built one8.

This anachronistic but analytically valuable conception is actually in parallels with the use of symbols on Ankara City Gates. As a representative and a municipal leader

8 See Footnote 3.

34 of the AKP, Gökçek’s borrowings from different cultural, political, historical resources is an ideological way of conducting spolia in a modern context.

Arch of Constantine which was built in Rome (315 C.E.) to celebrate Constantine’s victory over Maxentius (Pierce, 1989, p. 388) is a great example to discuss how symbols are inserted onto gigantic structures. Spolia “refers to the reused parts of architectural constructions that are taken from a demolished building…” (Brenk,

1987, p. 103). Simply, spolia is utilization of parts from the preceding structures in building new ones. For instance, Pierce (1989) suggests that Emperor Constantine used numerous spolia on his arch, for the ideological assertion of his power and also to refer to his predecessors (p. 389). In the case of the Arch of Constantine, the intention behind the use of spolia is again a representation of ideological motives.

Brenk suggests that the arch “…is not precipitous patchwork but a prominent monument of imperial propaganda…” (1987, p. 104). Besides the fact that there are discussions in the literature on economic necessities of the period, and aesthetic inferiority; the ideological message of spolia on this structure bears an unavoidable depth. A victorious emperor, Constantine uses this opportunity to present a message of power and imperial dominance in terms of the ability to put certain aesthetic entities together.

Similar to the problematization of the gate erected by Emperor Constantine, or other

Roman acts of spolia, Ankara City Gates can also be argued to present a case where spolia is once again in use. The difference between the approach observed in the city gate of Ankara and how historians problematize Roman rulers’ approach towards conflating symbols onto a new structure is the fact that new city gates of Ankara do not bear remnants of old structures upon themselves. What is attached to Ankara City

Gates are ideas, conceptions, images, imaginations, symbols borrowed from different sources of the ideology of the AKP, and the Turkish State: Mevlana from Islam and

Sufism; Crescent and star from a Muslim-Turkish nationalism; Golden decorations from Ottoman palaces; Octagonal Star from Seljuk Empire…. Although spolia is not identically applied in the case of Ankara City Gates, the concept helps this project to understand why these gates bear different symbols. In a way, these gates are examples of ideological spolia, since different symbols from different ideological sources of the AKP are observable on the structures. Lack of a material borrowing does not prevent the AKP from ideologically marking its intervention into space.

Ankara City Gates are instrumentalized to present a certain ideological-historical narration that selectively reproduced the ideological mélange to which the AKP and the Turkish State subscribe. This narration marks Ankara City Gates as belonging to a history of Muslims, Turks and several other elements approved by the builder, the state. However, this past does not reside in the past but rather is reproduced within the gates and remind the under-standers what they are subjected to, of what culture they are citizens.

2.2 Background and the Ideological Context of Ankara City Gates

2.2.1 Modern Gates of Ankara

Although Ankara City Gates were erected just in March 2014, building gates in

Ankara has actually been a notion in the agenda of the municipality and architectural circles starting from 1990. Çalışkan (2010) argues that after the master plan of

Ankara 1990 was set, the urban image was below satisfactory levels although the corridors of the city extended in accordance with the plan. This problem of the image

36 was addressed by a series of competitions to design city entrances within the title of

“Beautiful Ankara Project” (p. 106). The jury report after completion of the project suggests that the idea of gate was relatively new to Turkish designers and announces that the competition was not entirely successful due to lack of participation

(Mimarlık Dergisi, 1990, p. 59). However, the conditions of the competition still resonate with the actual gates erected under Melih Gökçek administration. Especially the locations of the gates and the idea that gates are supposed to have a connection to the city they are adjacent to is parallel to the meaning behind the ultimately realized city gates (p. 58). In Olgun Çalışkan’s thorough study of “urban gateway” as an idea worth to revisit, these series of competitions are discussed in a quite detailed way.

One shift Çalışkan recognizes is the Islamist party winning the municipal elections and authoring the master plan of Ankara 2025 (2010, p. 110). The new administration under Gökçek canceled the results of the previously-held competitions and, in 1997, commissioned an architect to come up with “The Capital Ankara

Entrance Complexes” (p. 111). In these new designs, although they are eventually not built, the symbolic shift is obvious. From gates named “19 Mayıs”9 or “İlk

Hedef”10 to designs with minaret-like structures, the political-symbolic shift was identified as in opposition to the underlying political ethos which built the Turkish capital city as a secular one. In 2007, the municipality announced plans to build “city gates with symbolic value” and contribute to the aesthetics of Ankara (Tekel &

Aslan, 2016, p. 34). Interestingly this long journey including design competitions,

9 The gate on the road to Samsun was to be named after date which Atatürk arrived at Samsun to start the independence process. 10 The gate on the road to the West, and İzmir, was to be named after the signature line of Atatürk which he said in order to finish the Independence war by ordering troops to go to Mediterranean (“Armies, your first target (ilk hedef) is Mediterranean, march!”)

37 political shifts, announcements did not produce gates in material form on the main highways of the Turkish capital city until 2014.

Approaching towards the municipal elections in 2014, Gökçek administration had been in power for more two decades in Ankara. Gökçek as a mayor known for interesting projects and already mentioned various structures to be built in the

“entrances” of Ankara11, finally decided to build five gates on five main highways of

Ankara. Height of the structures varies between 25 and 35 meters, whereas length varies between 58 and 70 meters. The construction technique is described as

“mechanical assembly of stone surfacing” onto steel construction with “aluminum decorations elements” (Artagan, 2014). The naming of the gates is after the highways they built on. Main highways are publicly named after the cities they are connected to, and they are known as Konya Highway, Eskişehir Highway, Airport Highway,

Samsun Highway, and İstanbul Highway12. Therefore, the gates are named and designed according to these connections.

2.2.2 Ideological Basis of the AKP

The political context underlying this process of building gates for a city without walls revolves around the rise of Islamist politics in Turkey. The ideological identification of the Islamist party, the AKP, which has been governing Turkey for

11 In 2004, Gökçek pledged to build gigantic structures near the “entrances” of the city, such as a turning 50 meter Semazen sculpture (a dancing figure -a whirling dervish- belonging to the specific Sufi tradition rooting back to Mevlana), or a restaurant with a plane sculpture on top it (Ölmez, 2009). 12 They are officially named after certain elements of the cities they are connected to. For instance, Konya Highway is named as Mevlana Boulevard, name of the Sufi scholar and poet once resided in Konya. Another example is Eskişehir Highway which is officially named as Dumlupınar Boulevard, a place of historical significance for the Turkish Independence War.

38 most of the 21st century, reveals itself as the focal point in discussing what has happened to Turkish political ecosystem, which has led to the building of the objects of study of this thesis. Since it was founded in 2001, the AKP has been problematized as an ideological group which has Islamist, conservative, Ottomanist,

“Neo-Ottomanist”, “Muslim-democrat”, Neoliberal connotations, aspects and transformations (Axiarlis, 2014; Boyraz, 2011, 2011, 2018; Bozkurt, 2013; M. Çınar,

2018; Ergin & Karakaya, 2017; Gencer, 2010; Kaygusuz, 2018; Kinoğlu, 2014;

Özbudun, 2006; Walton, 2010). Although there is a lack of consensus on the ideological identity of the AKP, various works observe a certain political line which is built upon notions of Muslimhood, conservatism, and Ottomanism.

In the mainstream literature on Turkey’s political state of play, the dominant observation is the that until the end of 1980s Turkey had a political map identified by a left-right division, and this political topography transformed into a new phase identified by the division between Islam and secularism (Axiarlis, 2014; Cizre, 2008;

Delibaş, 2015; Heper, 2006; Özbudun, 2014; Yeşilada & Rubin, 2011). Özbudun summarizes the political transformation of the AKP in this Turkish political context, by stating that the AKP, once an Islamist party transformed into a conservative democrat character with an emphasis on pluralism (2006), and then transformed back into an Islamist position with an “authoritarian drift” (2014). Metin Heper, for instance, quotes Erdoğan, the leader of the party, and defines the AKP as a group of

“religious people who preferred to conduct secular politics,” (2006, p. 348).

Regardless of whether the AKP is identified as an Islamist party or not, Islam is observed to be a significant ideological source for the party. The ongoing transformation of the political party as a long-lasting power-holder entails an emphasis on the Islamic culture feeding into the divide between secularism and

Islam. Moreover, the observation shared by Heper and Özbudun is that the AKP became a political party which is capable of bringing together different concepts and ideological positions. While Özbudun labels this feature as “pluralism”, Heper emphasizes the way how the leader of the party announces that they are Muslims pursuing goals in a secular political context. This is actually an indication of how the

AKP is capable of putting forth a political ideological mélange

The other face of the literature on the AKP’s political line is the party’s approach towards the market economy, which is a combination of Islamic notions and capitalism, “an Islamic capitalism” (Madi, 2014, p. 146). In certain studies, the party ideology is problematized as a mélange of neoliberalism, which is a global economic wave, and the party’s own locality (Blad & Koçer, 2012; Bozkurt, 2013). Yıldız

Atasoy to approaches towards the AKP’s neoliberal face by providing a metaphor of

“marriage”, a synthesis between Islam and neoliberalism, then takes a further step and suggests that this combination also includes nationalism rooted in Islam (2009, p. 107). Once again, the AKP presents another façade to its observers which enables this thesis to argue that the political party is capable of combining various ideological sources and cultivating them. Although Islam and capitalism seem to contradict each other -in cases such as interest rates-, the abundance of works identifying the AKP as a neoliberal political group suggests that the party surpasses this contradictory fusion and further asserts an ideological mélange that is Islamist and neoliberal at the same time.

Last, but certainly not the least, a part of the literature on the AKP discusses the ideological process in which the AKP focuses on the concept of “civilization”

(medeniyet) and how the party embraced a political line of Islamist nationalism with

40 an Ottomanist note (A. Çınar, 2005, 2008, 2011; J. White, 2011; J. B. White, 2008,

2014). This discussion on the ideological identity of the AKP reveals how the party has the potential to intervene in the space. Especially the discussions of Islamic neoliberalism and Ottomanist nationalism are evidently connected to the municipal governance of the AKP regarding the Turkish capital city. It becomes more striking when it is considered that the city gates of Ankara were born in a neoliberal municipal context of government biddings, budgetary concerns and in a symbolic manner connotated with Ottomanist-nationalist-Islamist-neoliberal reshaping of the national space. A recent addition to this canon which problematize the ideology of the AKP as marked by Ottomanist symbols and values is Nagehan Tokdoğan’s

(2018) book on “new Ottomanism” established in Turkey with the AKP’s long- lasting hold of the state power. Tokdoğan connects this aspect of the AKP ideology to a research outlook which is based on affects and the affective economy between the state and the citizen. She argues that the affective politics of the AKP the support it cultivated via this politics can be best described by the “narrative of Neo-

Ottomanism” (p.18). It is actually a vista resembling the perspective employed by this study since the Ankara Gates contributes to the formation of a cultural citizenship through transmitting various symbols, patterns and power relations belonging to different narratives rooted back to various ideological sources of the

AKP. Tokdoğan’s emphasis on affects and emotions cultivated and circulated by the narrative of Neo-Ottomanism in forming a new national identity -and thus a new citizenship- can be read along with an observation of the city gates of Ankara as these structures loaded with symbols function to invite their under-standers into a dominion of the Turkish State and a cultural citizenship that can be characterized parallel to the understanding of citizenship of the AKP.

To connect this literature on the AKP’s ideological background to instances of power schemas which are inspired from the same ideological basis, certain instances from sources open to modern ideological interpretation should be discussed. Especially taking the AKP’s Ottomanist, Islamist ideological notes into account, in the following two sub-sections, this study will exemplify how certain sources, which are still in circulation, are able to inspire the AKP, and the Turkish State to instrumentalize the act of gate-building as a metaphor of power, a tool of reproducing a certain understanding of cultural citizenship. First, a fabricated myth of the story of the construction of Yenikapi in Istanbul by Murad the 4th will be presented to argue for the presence of the power relation schema between the gate- builder (the state), and the under-stander -the citizen subject- realized by building a gate. Then, Evliya Çelebi’s descriptions of gates in the Anatolia of the 17th century will be briefly discussed as a modern source of ideological inspiration for the political party.

2.2.3 A Myth of Gate-Building: Yenikapı and Murat the 4th

Rather than looking at structures from the Ottoman, or Seljuk history and inquiring into them in an anachronistic manner, this paper can exemplify how the use of gates as metaphorical structures corresponds to currently-circulated modern myths that reproduce power-relations similar to the way the AKP and the Turkish State conceives the relation between citizen and the state. By circulation, this paper means that a myth is found in resources that are contemporary to the writing of this thesis or at least reiterated in modern Turkish history.

One myth provides a strange model to understand how gate-building metaphorically positions the state and the citizen. It is the story of the construction of Yenikapı by

Murat the 4th, a myth that pops up in personal conversations, in little Tv movies

(Flash TV), online video streaming platforms, popular history books (Ukray, 2018).

As the story goes, Sultan Murat the 4th, having banned alcohol, opium consumption, and fortunetelling, decides to take a stroll in Istanbul. In disguise, he rents a boat to sail across the Bosphorus. The boatman, Ahmed Aga starts to row, but at the same time, he offers forbidden items to his customer. After he takes up Wine, tobacco, opium from his stash, the sultan remains patient. Dramatically, Ahmed Aga is also a fortuneteller, he offers to provide his customer to his fortune. At this stage, the boatman realizes through his metaphysical skills that his customer is Sultan Murat himself. His identity revealed, the sultan is enraged at his subject’s disobedience regarding the bans. The boatman begs to have a deal with the Sultan. Ahmed Aga claims he can guess which gate the Sultan would choose to enter the city. Sultan agrees to the deal and takes a folded note from the boatman to open only after he enters the city. However, when they land, the Sultan orders his men to execute the boatman. Then, he confidently orders to destroy a part of the wall of the city and build a new gate (Yenikapı) to the city. After a while, Murat the 4th enters the city through his new gate and unfolds the note of the executed boatman. The note says:

My Sultan, enjoy your new gate.

This fabricated story circulates via various platforms and sources, but the premise of the myth is a versatile one. As “mythmaking has been central to both domination and resistance” in Turkey (Çetin, 2004), the power relation between the boatman Ahmed

Aga, and the Sultan Murat has the potential to interpreted differently by the audience of the myth. At one hand, the dramatic ending suggests a subversive moment almost reanimating the executed subject and enabling him to mock the sultan and his power.

On the other hand, however, Sultan Murat succeeds in reinforcing his power position

43 by being able to build a gate at once. The moment of putting the boatman in a subject position is not actually the order to execute him. The power relation is set with

Sultan Murat’s decision to build a new wall, a decision he thinks beyond imagination and fortunetelling tricks. This monarchic, absolute power position does not only reside in the brute force of killing a human being but also with the metaphorical value of being able to build a gate to the city.

To emphasize once again, the myth of Sultan Murat building the Yenikapı is not a product of historical investigation. It is a mere instance, a modern myth that is circulated among the citizens of the Turkish Republic, and surely Ankara. Whether the boatman has the ironic, subversive upper-hand over Sultan’s authority to build a gate, or the Sultan eventually prevails by finding in himself the power of building a gate and executing a subject, in each interpretation the power relation between the state and the subject revolves around the metaphor of gate. The hierarchy is established by the question of who is able to build a gate. Although a clever guess might present a dramatic twist in the story, the absolute power of the sultan is reproduced via the metaphorical functions of the gate, in this case, Yenikapı.

2.2.4 An Ideological Source Revisited: Evliya Çelebi’s Gates

Like the myth of Sultan Murat and construction of Yenikapı is a modern source,

Evliya Çelebi’s descriptions of gates in Anatolia brings this study the ability to showcase how the AKP’s Ottomanist, Islamist, and nationalist ideological mélange can find examples of power relation schemas that are embedded in the idea of building, or standing under a gate. Especially modern Turkish “translation” of Evliya

Çelebi’s Seyahatname13 provides the Turkish society and ideological groups with a rich source that is open to investment in meaning, interpretation, and inspiration in terms of reproducing historical, cultural constructs of the Ottoman Anatolia in a modern Turkish political context. A recent example of this investment is the AKP advertisement in which the president and the party leader Erdogan calls out to Evliya

Çelebi (Internet Haber, 2019). In the advertisement, Evliya Çelebi is appealed to as a chronicler of services of the state to the Ottoman Empire mainly by building and conquering, then Erdogan asks the traveler (with the catchphrase of “Write Great

Traveler!” “Yaz Koca Seyyah!”) to write the modern deeds of his party, building bridges, railways, tunnels, etc. It is the perfect example of the use of Evliya Çelebi as a modern political ideological source. How Erdogan associates himself and his party to Evliya Çelebi and thus Ottoman History is also applicable to any other political leader alluded to refer to the same ideological basis. The traveler’s descriptions of gates and the power relation implied by these structures are still modern ideological sources worthy of discussing in tandem with the construction of Ankara City Gates.

Evliya Çelebi’s Seyahatname, like the myth of Murat the 4th, stops being an object of history and becomes a modern source of ideological reproduction of certain roles, schemas, boundaries, and understanding of citizenship within the Turkish polity.

13 Nurettin Gemici (2012) criticizes this manner of studying Evliya Çelebi with volumes of the Seyahatname translated into Modern Turkish (p. 184). It is an agreeable critique, and it should be seriously considered when writing a historical investigation into Evliya Çelebi’s accounts. However, in the case of this study, the modern Turkish version of the Seyahatname becomes the only choice to conduct a preliminary analysis. Since this work is not a historical investigation, it becomes a social scientific inquiry into how gates in Evliya Çelebi’s Seyahatname can still resonate in the modern Turkish political, cultural context. Bearing in mind that historical facts and context are indispensable to realize this type of inquiry, use of the original text is not completely necessary. Therefore, each Evliya Çelebi reference in this thesis work comes from the seminal work of Yücel Dağlı and Seyit Ali Kahraman (2003, 2005b, 2006, 2010).

Reading through the pages of Evliya Çelebi’s book of travels, the pattern a modern audience would initially recognize is the abundance of the description of cities and the material condition of the fortresses in the 17th century Anatolia. Almost without exception, Evliya Çelebi’s descriptions entail an emphasis on the number, shape, symbolism, location, or materiality of the gates. The methodological fault here would be to jump into the conclusion that gates’ political importance in the time of Evliya

Çelebi still continues to exist in Gökçek’s era. This revisit to Evliya Çelebi, though, does not attempt at drawing a continuous line between Evliya Çelebi’s time and

Gökçek’s. Rather, this project only puts forth that it is worth considering the presence of Evliya Çelebi’s texts in the modern era. The text itself entails certain power schemas positioning the state and the subject, which is open to ideological interpretations by its modern readers in terms of putting forth an understanding of citizenship.

In describing gates, Evliya Çelebi emphasizes them in accordance with their political, symbolic functions. In the comprehensive part where the traveler takes

Istanbul into account, the reader encounters comparisons between the number of gates in the Roman era and the era of Mehmed the 2nd (2003, p. 26); how there are special and general gates in the city (p. 28); the magical number of the gates of Hagia

Sophia which are said by Evliya Çelebi to be made from the ruins of Noah’s ark(p.

88); how awe-inspiring some mosque gates are (p. 174-176). The emphasis put on gates is almost always followed by gates’ association to a web of power. Sometimes the viziers in İstanbul play a role in the naming of the gates, sometimes an aspect of neighborhood (e.g. dense population of members of a certain occupation, jewelers and the gate of jewelers) surrounding the gate shapes the description of the traveler.

In certain instances, a city’s own ideological-historical investments reveal

46 themselves via gates. Sometimes, the traveler writes in his book a description of a city gate which is made of iron, and concludes that it is a strong structure. Then, right after referring to its materiality, Evliya Çelebi describes the symbols attached to the gate. For instance, in the description of the Kemah Fortress, an inner gate strikes the traveler in terms of both materiality and symbolism. After mentioning and praising the building material, the traveler shares that he saw a mace and the bow of Ali, a disciple, and son-in-law of the prophet Muhammed. He connects this symbolism to the myth of the city folk about Ali visiting a place near the city. This vista towards gates, the power relations they transmit via their names, numbers, material qualities and symbolism can be argued to be a potential source of inspiration for modern ideological eyes to be inspired in their own outlook of the gate, and the power relation it metaphorically puts forth.

Besides the description of gates, the traveler also consistently uses the word “kapı”

(kapu) in his own references to the state authority. “Devlet Kapısı”, “the gate of the state”, is a repeated usage by Evliya Çelebi (2003, p. 163, 250; 2005a, p. 355, 433,

446). A prominent text that is associated with the vague concept of Ottoman history equalizing the metaphor of gate with the state is an important hint at how a modern - and Ottomanist-reader can associate the metaphor with power. This idiom is a widely-used linguistic unit to refer to the Turkish State even in modern times.

Furthermore, the state itself instrumentalized this usage to re-imagine itself as a more accessible power center by naming its digital space “turkiye.gov.tr” as “e-Devlet

Kapısı” (electronic gate of state). Although this does not mean Evliya Çelebi initiated or described a continuity between his historical moment and Gökçek’s, the usage in this text “Devlet Kapısı” corresponds to the current renaming practice of the state,

47 which is orchestrated by the same ideological authority, the AKP whose head called out to the traveler to have him written its building successes.

Last, but certainly not the least, Evliya Çelebi has another account related to gates’ ideological value for the modern readers of the text. It is the traveler’s autobiographical narration of him being subjected to Sultan Murat the 4th. In the account, Evliya Çelebi is accepted into the inner chamber of the Sultan. It is a beginning for the traveler to reside near the Sultan for a long duration. Already related to an important figure within the circles of the throne, his father, Evliya

Çelebi recalls this story with the word of gate, and introduces it in such a way: “This section, jocularly, tells of this humble person’s entrance into the Inner House (the palace) and kapılanma (“being gated”14, being subjected) to the Gazi Murad Han”15

(2003, p. 202). Being accepted into the inner circle of the Sultan, and enabled to benefit from the residence of his majesty is epitomized in one word, gate. Once again, Evliya Çelebi’s text, which is open to interpretation by a modern ideological lens, provides the reader with an instance where gate operates as a metaphor of power. In the schema, the individual is subjected into Sultan’s dominion through a metaphor of gate. Although this story does not entail an act of building a gate in

Sultan’s account, the power relation schema still operates via the metaphor of gate to position the state and the subject. And, it ultimately opens itself to the interpretation

14 Kapılanmak can also be translated as to enter the service of, to be liable to. In each sense of the word, however, the word kapı connotates the act with the metaphor gate. And in each translation, the hierarchy between the one who is subjected, and the one who is subjected to endures. 15 It is merely a coincidence that two ideological myths selected for this study come from the same era, and includes Sultan Murat the 4th as a figure representing the state, and filling the position of builder.

48 of the modern reader who can compose an understanding of citizenship that is positioned hierarchically disadvantaged, under “the gate of state”.

What Evliya Çelebi as a reading material of a modern reader presents is a possibility of conceiving the gate as a conveyor of power relations in a modern setting.

Especially for an ideological base which partially stems from Ottomania/Ottomanist elements, Evliya Çelebi’s regard for gates shows the potential of the metaphor of gate. Regardless of whether any municipal personnel in Ankara read Evliya Çelebi’s account of gates, the presence of the Seyahatname in the modern intellectual circulation of the AKP is the perfect example of how gates can be metaphors of power, for which the AKP and the state constantly seeks. After all, “the great traveler” is asked to “write down” by the same ideological group, and the traveler is doing so.

2.3 Political Use of Space in Turkey

This review of the literature on the party and the ideological mindset to which

Gökçek belongs, brings this thesis to a specific review of how the AKP’s intervention to the national and urban space has been studied. The political use of space in Turkey is a domain recently on rise. However, the attention of this emerging literature is mostly focused on the early Republican era where the Kemalist government founded a new Turkish State with a renewed ethos and ideology (Kezer,

2016; Önge, 2007). In this approach, Bozdoğan’s (2002) historicization of the

Turkish architecture as a politically-conditioned notion is a seminal work to understand how political use of space was present in the Early Republic. In the same domain, Gülsüm Baydar’s (2002) study of how domesticity was linked with

49 womanhood is an influential study both in terms of its finding and methodology.

Especially, the use of the concept of metaphor in relation to space is a source of inspiration for this thesis. Baydar argues that “the figure of the proper woman seems to have worked as an appropriate metaphor for the modern house,” (p. 232). The way she reveals how Kemalist politics shaped both the woman subject and the modern

Turkish home, is indispensable to the literature. In addition to these a collection of works edited by Güven Arif Sargın (2002) takes Ankara as a space on which concepts of memory, ideology, identity can be built. The collection presents the possibility of conceiving the space as a political dimension of remembrance and memory in the Turkish context. Sargın’s own work (2004) on Ankara explores how the city was once “homogenizingly” appropriated by the Kemalist modernization project, and then how it became a conflated spatio-temporal entity consisting of different antagonistic positions, and their spatial attempts to remember and forget (p.

677). Although this thesis does not contribute to the literature of collective memory,

Sargın’s understanding of how the city is a space where different attempts to shape citizenship and ideology can be observed is valuable to a research effort trying situate the construction of Ankara City Gates. The new city gates of Ankara actually also play into this game of forgetting and remembering for the sake of an ideological vista.

Alev Cinar’s editorial work, and own works in collections (A. Çınar & Bender,

2007) and her book on Turkish politics, which problematized Turkish modernity in relation to Islam and secularism (2005), also pave the way for a more complete literature on the political use of space in the context of Turkey. The idea that “a new sense of nationhood comes to life and is reified through the erection and placement of symbols of the nation in urban spaces” (pp. 100) is a point upon which this thesis

50 built. Coming to the discussions of the contemporary political use of space in

Turkey, one of the main points of analysis is focused to the power struggle in certain city spaces such as Taksim and Kızılay squares (Batuman, 2015; Baykan & Hatuka,

2010; Gül, John Dee, & Cahide Nur Cünük, 2014). Batuman’s latest work on

Islamist architecture and urbanism, (2017) constitutes an expansion of the literature into an opening where researchers from geography, architecture, city planning, and social sciences can problematize space as an element of the reproduction of political notions such as Islam, nation, state. For instance, in the book, Batuman regards “built environment as constitutive of the social,” (p. 4) and argues that the current agenda in the political use of the Turkish space is a “quest for achieving an architectural representation of millet [nation] incorporating nationalism and Islam,” (p. 194). In a literature, which is naturally/mainly populated/characterized by architects and urban planners, Batuman, also an architect, produces a social analysis of the Turkish space, and opens up the literature to a possibility of a midpoint between the social and the spatial in the Turkish context. Moreover, as this thesis problematize Ankara City

Gates as metaphorical tools forming a new mode of cultural citizenship, Batuman’s analysis of the new Islamist architecture as forming a new understanding of nation - thus citizenship- that is Islamist-nationalist further opens up an analytical corridor for this particular case study.

The political use of space in Turkey reveals itself also as a more sociological research venue, which takes neighborhoods, municipalities, urban policies and the social transformation around urban elements into account. For example, mostly monographic works approach towards certain areas within the Turkish political space as objects of study through various methods, problematics, and theoretical frameworks. A study of how legal changes lead to changes in the spatial in Ankara

(Bektaş, 2014); a monograph focusing on Bahçelievler and Emek’s transformation in terms of public space and identity (Sökmensüer, 2014); or an analysis of socio- spatial differences in Ankara (Yüceşahin & Tuysuz, 2011) can be put in this category. There are certain research efforts that resemble this thesis project in terms of the nature of intersection between the spatial and the social. Özberk (2018) takes

Nevşehir as a space that has been subjected to ideological interventions of the same political ideological basis that is neoliberal-conservative with Ottomanist-nationalist notes through the nomination of various places, and generation of memorial spaces.

In a similar argumentation, Özberk claims that “the new powerholders reorganized semiotic space” by spatially codifying ideologically conditioned “values and inscription” (2018, p. 697). Like this sociological inquiry, this thesis also aims to take certain spatial instances as textual material and put forth a semiotic, interpretive analysis.

Furthermore, a literature focusing on gentrification, and other consequences of spatial policies of the government has an indispensable place in researching the

AKP’s intervention to urban space by displacing, gentrifying, reconstructing, redesigning and re-legislating (Bıçkı & Özgökçeler, 2012; Can, 2013; Durmaz, 2016;

Öner & Şimşek, 2017; Uzun, 2003). These inquiries into the depth of the AKP’s urban and spatial practices benefit this study in terms of presenting the extent of the spatial ideals of the party. For instance, Şahin, Çekiç and Gözcü conduct monographic analysis of two municipal authorities in Ankara, Çankaya (2014) and

Keçiören (2015) in order to outline different municipal practices and features. As

Çankaya belong to the opposition party, the Chp, and Keçiören belong to the AKP, the differences in terms of institutional, fiscal and cultural policies further enable the literature on the political use of space to comprehend how a certain ideological

52 outlook is capable of putting forth pragmatic impact. Although gates’ presence is more of political-metaphorical nature, the ideological baggage of Ankara City Gates entails this sort of consequences. The mode of cultural citizenship corresponding to the conception of citizenship representing ideological basis of the AKP and the

Turkish State, and the webs of power relations entailing all of these do not stop at a point where the inhabitant, the citizen subject, the under-stander is constantly subjectified; but it also resonates on where the AKP and its municipal agents can act upon this power schema and utilize it over their subjects via gentrification, or displacement.

CHAPTER III

FORTIFYING A CITY WITHOUT WALLS: AN ANALYSIS

Statistical data provided by a state agency, General Directorate of Highways, suggest that each artery Ankara City Gates are built upon was daily used by more than fifty thousand vehicles in 2018 (state Highways Traffic Volume Map, 2018). In a simple calculation, it could be deduced that in a year millions of individuals pass through the gates Melih Gökçek, former mayor of Ankara, built in 2014. What these millions of people encounter on a daily basis, as a part of their experience of Turkish capital city and Turkish polity in general, is hardly a coincidental, minute detail. Rather, these gates standing restlessly, waiting for more millions of individuals to behold them, can be studied in a manner that recognizes the volume of their reach.

In this chapter, firstly, the gates will be taken as textual material, and analyzed in an effort to test the argument of this thesis which suggests these gates are metaphors materialized in a context of the city and are showing functions within a power relation between the builder of the gate and the one who is passing by/under. The analysis of the gates is made by using above-mentioned Gieryn’s three ground rules

(2000) to identify the place in social inquiries. Therefore, the location, materiality, and investment in meaning will be examined in each gate. This analysis of the gates will be discussed with regard to their functions, first using ideological spolia; second, boundary-drawing; third, interpellating the under-standers, namely subjectification.

This analysis takes place in a rather holistic manner since location, materiality, and

54 investment in meaning determine one another. Moreover, the functions too are in a proactive relationship with the three ground rules of Gieryn and within themselves.

Thus, gates are put at the center, and the analysis revolves around the gate in a less compartmentalizing way.

Secondly, analysis of these gates is accompanied by an analysis of Melih Gökçek’s statements on these structures. How the former mayor defines and frames these structures will be added to the analysis of the gates so that a textual analysis of the spatial structures can be considered in a context where the commissioner/builder’s comments are recognized, taken into account. Thirdly, certain instances of public response to these gates are put into consideration to see if alleged metaphorical features and political functions of these structures have any traces in the citizens, under-standers. Lastly, how the act of building gates is resurrected in the modern

Turkish political context and how Gökçek Ankara City Gates act as a model regardless of the building dates is discussed with examples from Anatolian cities.

In other words, this chapter enables the reader to inquire into the gates of Ankara, their metaphorical significance, and as metaphors what functions they serve in terms of power relations, ideology, and history. To notify the reader with necessary spoilers, Ankara City Gates to be analyzed materialize the metaphor of gate and present a curious case of intersection between the metaphorical and the spatial.

Regardless of the intention of the agents behind the construction of the structures, this intersection between the spatial and metaphorical brings in three significant functions to these gates. First, through symbols attached to these gates, gates become tools of historical narration. As the symbols are selective/politically attached, in other words, “ideological spolia” is used on Ankara City Gates, the story narrated through

55 these gates become a selective ideological-historical one, of an Islamist-Ottomanist- nationalist nature. Secondly, the gates function to form boundaries for a political entity, Ankara. Although there are already legal boundaries assigned to Ankara, gates play into this boundary-formation game by being literally gates into something. This boundary-drawing function ultimately positions the builder of these gates, the AKP and the Turkish State at the top, since they are the power-holders defining the borders of Ankara. The third function puts ideological spolia and boundary-drawing to its service and reveals itself as Ankara City Gates interpellate the ones who pass through them, the under-standers. These gates’ subject-forming function metaphorically puts the state in the position of the builder and the citizen in a hierarchically disadvantaged position, a subjecthood that is defined, mapped, marked and narrated by the city gates themselves.

3.1 Standing Under and Under-standing Gates

Figure 1 Locations of Ankara City Gates (Map Data from Google) (2019) What happens when one stands under a gate or passes through it is, first of all, an activity of understanding. A mere bystander or an engaged citizen would initially interact with the gate by translating the material structure into a mental space. This moment of under-standing is more evident when a researcher takes Lefebvre’s problematization of space as a question of representation and being represented into account. In his seminal work (1991), he puts forth how there is a “representational space” which operates beyond the physical space, and draws its existence from the imagination of “inhabitants”, or “users” (p. 39). A material structure exists in a mental space, a space of meanings, images generated by the inhabitants, the society.

Ankara City Gates is in line with this theoretical breakthrough, as they are capable of stimulating the citizens to engage in a discussion of the meaning of these gates.

Similar to this theoretical perspective, Gieryn’s (2000) final ground rule to define a place, “investment in meaning” intersects with this idea of inhabitants living,

57 experiencing the space by representing it in their own imaginative terms. The new city gates of Ankara succeed in being part of the representational space, as the inhabitants and visitors of the Turkish capital city are bound to experience these spatial structures. In Figure 1 above, a map of locations of Ankara City Gates can be seen. These gates on the map are located on the main highways connecting Ankara to adjacent cities, they require any traveler using vehicles to pass under/through them. It is almost impossible not to see, thus live the representation space of these gates. As their symbolism, and investment made in their meanings will be analyzed in this section, one will be able to see that their material inevitability of the gates leads them to be conceived into a mental space, rendered as metaphorical structures with various functions to operate within the minds of the citizens.

The Konya Road City Gate (Fig. 2) is a structure built upon the Mevlana Boulevard, a highway which reaches to the center of the city and connects the city to its neighborhoods and counties in the South, most notably Konya which is generally politically connotated with Islamic elements and Mevlana’s Sufism. According to the report published by the commissioned firm, the construction process took 60 days to be completed. The report describes the construction technique used as “mechanical assembly of stone surfacing” onto steel construction (Artagan, 2014). The stone- coating is applied with Nevşehir chalcuite. The cupolas on both sides of the gates seem to be designed to refer to an Ottoman-Seljuk understanding of architecture. The porcelain, chinaware plate with blue/turquoise details in the middle also play the game of symbolism along with the cupolas.

Figure 2 Konya Road City Gate (Artagan, 2014)

Lastly, the octagonal star engraving below the cupolas is firstly, and again, a symbolic act of design to contribute to the construction of the notion of Ottoman-

Seljuk architecture. It is a frequent design practice since 2007, the opening of the new Akp headquarters (Çekmiş & Hacıhasanoğlu, 2014, p. 129). The octagonal star, or the Seljuk star, has been a controversial point since the construction of the new headquarters of the AKP. The controversy has been centered on the symbolic value of the star, and the design became immediately political with the question whether it is “Star of David” or a Turkish-Islamic star rooted back to Seljuks. The AKP administration even felt the need to explain it is a Seljuk star in their official websites by suggesting that it has a historical origin in the Seljuk Empire and it was firstly seen by the party’s leader in a visit to Central Asia (Haber7, 2007; Haberturk, 2007).

Even in this framing attempt, it can be argued that the AKP is using the octagonal star as a reference to the Seljuk roots of the Turkish State. The further uses of the star followed this controversy, but as the party grasped state power more and more, the

Seljuk star became almost mainstream. As an aesthetic touch resonating in numerous

59 structures built by different agents of the AKP, this octagonal star strikes one’s researcher eyes as an instance of ideological spolia. Attaching this symbol to the

Konya Road City Gate, the AKP accomplishes to refer to one source of its ideological basis, the aspiration to belong to a Seljuk past. This manner of reference to Seljuks empowers the Konya Road City Gate to function within the concept of ideological spolia in two ways. First, the structure gives out to its under-standers the ideological position of itself and the nature of dominion they are entering into. The

AKP’s Ankara becomes marked by being suggested to have a Seljuk past. However, this does not only regulate which past the under-standers of the Konya Road City gate belong to. Also, it connects under-standers’ Ankara to an ideological basis whose most powerful establishment has the same symbol attached to its headquarters. Secondly, city gates of Ankara accomplish to communicate an expansive claim to their under-standers. While the octagonal star marks Ankara as

Seljuk, it also has the claim to represent Konya and its Seljuk past. And of course,

Konya has a Seljuk past, but Konya Road City Gate does not simply go after stating the obvious historical fact. It selectively positions Konya within an ideological/historical narration that is followed and reproduced by the AKP and the

Turkish State. Ideological spolia acts this way. The builder takes a certain symbol that is not original, or even material, and uses it to serve a certain ideological end, in this case forming a certain ideological-historical narrative to the citizen subject, the under-stander. The Seljuk Star on the Konya Road City Gate acts in this way.

What is not seen in Figure 2 is the landscape design around the Konya Road City

Gate. Although it is not essentially a part of the structure, it is later added to the complex of the gate. The fundamental pieces in the landscape are Mevlana statutes both “inside” and “outside” of the Konya Road City Gate. It is not counter-intuitive

60 to see an Islamist municipal authority to erect a statue of a Sufi Scholar named

Mevlana from Konya on a road named Mevlana Boulevard and connecting the city to

Konya. However, surprise is not a necessary condition to invest in the meaning of the city gate and use ideological spolia. Mevlana is a religious figure, which is a trait making his name, and image as a great opportunity to reproduce meaning in one of the camps of the religious/secular divide. The same problématique Konya City Road has with the octagonal Seljuk Star takes place with the presence of the figure of

Mevlana. Of course, Mevlana is a figure lived in Konya, but the presence of the statute uses this historical fact as only an excuse to further put forth an ideological claim. Konya and Ankara become marked by a builder mentality which inclined to highlight certain elements of the cities in accordance with ideological affinity.

Combined with the Seljuk star, Mevlana statute tells the under-standers of the Konya

Road City Gate a Seljuk-centered, Islamist story: A story that reconstructs the dominion of the AKP and the Turkish State, and invites, greets, “interpellates” the under-standers, and Ankara, and Konya to this dominion whose boundaries are materialized in the form of city gates. The citizen subjects of the Turkish State confront an Ankara reshaped by a story told by these structures. As the city is shaped, the citizen(ship) is shaped as well. The interpellation of the Konya Road City

Gate entails a new cultural citizenship that is Seljuk and Islamic. Moreover, it is connecting the city of Ankara, and the interconnectedness of which Ankara is at the center to a greater narration. Ankara, and its highway connection to Konya marks the

Islamic part of this grand narrative.

In the case of the Samsun Road City Gate (Fig. 3), the structure is positioned on a highway that constitutes eastern half of the horizontal axis of Ankara, starting from the center leading towards eastern and north-eastern neighbors of the capital city.

The material features of the gate are almost identical to the Konya Road City Gate.

Therefore, the report introducing the gate’s physical aspects is similar too. It is reported that steel construction is covered with stone-surfacing methods, and the stone used is once again Nevşehir chalcuite (Artagan, 2014). The identical features in terms of materiality can be argued to bring a sense of totality to these gates. It will be seen in the sub-section discussing statements of Gökçek that the AKP and the

Turkish State employs a totalistic approach with regard to their electorate, and, citizen subjects; thus, this parallelism in materiality is in line with this totalistic thinking. As the under-standers are one crowd that is invited into becoming a subject within a certain power relation schema, these similar material features gain further meaning in interpellating a totality, as a totality of citizens under-standing the AKP and the Turkish State.

Figure 3 Samsun Road City Gate (Erdem, 2014) In comparison to the Konya Road City Gate, the attachment of symbolism, thus ideological spolia is relatively subtler with the lack of landscaping and any specific statutes/figures. Mainly, the gate only accomplishes to refer to the conception of

Ottoman-Seljuk architecture. Verticality is more emphasized in the design with

62 thinner rectangular columns with threaded poles in their four corners, and sharper cupolas. The Seljuk star is once again visible in the ornaments as a pattern, although it is not one of the emphasized features of the structure. Despite the subtlety though, the presence of ideological spolia as a function still “greets” the under-standers.

Even giving out the sense that these gates are constructed as instances of “Ottoman-

Seljuk architecture” ideologically marks the city. These gates open to a dominion of the Turkish State which gave birth to and embraced the architectural concept. Once again, Samsun Road City Gate accomplishes to present a certain ideological- historical narration.

The use of ideological spolia becomes easier to observe on the middle column, on which there is the most emphasized symbol attached: It is a crescent with a star on the top. This is an obvious reference to the Turkish flag, which could be associated with an effort to reproduce a fictional architectural concept like Ottoman-Seljuk, but it could be further analyzed in the lines of another ideological source. This move in the game of symbolism can be identified as an investment in the nationalist façade of the ideological background of the AKP. In other words, Ottoman-Seljuk references are conflated with a modern political symbol that speaks to a nationalist aspect of the

AKP ideology and the citizenship formed in parallel to this ideological basis. This conflation of symbols from different political bases is observable in each of the gates, is in line with the concept of spolia. The Turkish flag, not a symbol necessarily belonging to an ideological basis is used on a structure that has an ideological premise. With this use, the crescent and the star on the Turkish flag becomes an instance of ideological spolia on the Samsun Road City Gate. Billig states that “the metonymic image of banal nationalism is not a flag which is being consciously waved with fervent passion; it is the flag hanging unnoticed on the public building.”

(1995, p. 8). Ankara City Gates’ patient stance on main highways of Ankara and this specific symbol of the crescent and a star is actually the perfect of example of how city gates can remind people of a certain mode of citizenship, and invite them into it.

The citizen subject, the under-stander is called into a citizenship that is flagged and marked to be a Turkish one. This emphasis on Turkishness connects Ankara and Samsun, and the

Turkish polity in general to another aspect of the grand narrative reproduced by Ankara City

Gates. This time, investing on Samsun’s ideological, national baggage of being the starting point of the Kemalist national independence struggle, Samsun Road City Gate functions to reproduce the nationalist part of the ideological mélange of the AKP and the Turkish State.

The Istanbul Road City Gate (Fig. 4) is similar to other gates in terms of location, situated on a highway connecting Ankara to adjacent cities. However, the direction of the highway is ultimately Istanbul, and it is maybe the most symbolically-charged city for the ideological background of the AKP. In a way, Istanbul is the city which marks the beginning of the ascent of the ideological basis and the leader of the AKP,

Erdoğan, who was elected as the mayor of the former Ottoman capital, and the modern Turkish metropolis along with Melih Gökçek’s electoral success in Ankara.

This specific meaning of İstanbul renders material features of the gate surprisingly different from the other four gates. The argument above stating that similar materiality is in line with the totalistic attitude of Ankara City Gate towards their under-standers is interrupted by this sole exception of Istanbul Road City Gate.

Especially the stone-surfacing material is selected especially for the Istanbul gate.

Whereas Nevşehir Chalcuite is used in the other four gates’ surfacing process,

Istanbul Gate’s steel construction is covered with travertine. In a way, the location of the gates impacts their materiality to an extent where literally its building stone is different. By establishing this difference in materiality, the material qualities are

64 actually instrumentalized as ideological spolia to further complicate the ideological- historical narration. The former Ottoman capital city and the place of genesis for the

AKP is materially and ideologically accentuated through the investment made in the meaning and materiality of the İstanbul Road City Gate.

Figure 4 Istanbul Road City Gate (Artagan, 2014)

Another striking difference in the gate’s material features is revealed when the coloring of the aluminum decoration is taken into account. Especially the three gold- colored decorative additions at the top of the columns are the only examples of the use of the color of golden yellow. The investment in the meaning of the Istanbul

Road City Gate does not exist independent from the materiality of the structure. As

Istanbul is a city in which location, materiality, and ideology are embedded to one another, the Istanbul Road City Gate also represents this interactive relation between the location, materiality, and ideology. The other aluminum decoration elements constituting a new layer on the stone surface also produces a difference in both materiality and meaning/ideology aspect of the structure. These ornaments do not carry the Seljuk Star in any way but present a flower-based decoration pattern. This

65 symbolic difference might be read as an attempt to locate Istanbul in an Ottomanist historical topography, via the design of the Istanbul Road City Gate. This Ottomanist topography marks another aspect of the ideological mélange of the AKP. Rendering

Ankara and İstanbul, and the interconnectedness between the two cities Ottoman constitutes another part of the grand narrative. Ankara, after being Islamic, Seljuk,

Turkish, becomes an Ottoman city.

The Seljuk star from a nationalist base, Mevlana from an Islamic understanding of the history of Central Anatolia, a.k.a. Islamism, crescent and the star to denote

Turkish flag, golden decorative elements to refer to a conception Ottoman Istanbul are, in a way, borrowed from the AKP’s ideological sources. These borrowed elements are attached to Ankara City Gates, as historians observe Roman rulers taking different elements from various eras, and areas to build new monuments to communicate power. The ideological spolia attached to Ankara City Gates serves to narrate a selective ideological-historical story, which is Ottomanist, nationalist and

Islamist at the same time. As the city gates become part of the city, as they stand above the visitors, inhabitants, citizens of the city, they present the spolia attached upon themselves. While Konya Road City Gate announces Konya as a Seljuk,

Islamic, Sufi city, Istanbul Road City Gate being made of a different, more expensive stone narrates the history of Istanbul in a voice that prioritizing İstanbul and its

Ottoman aspect. This first function of the gates also shows how they serve to reproduce the substance of the cultural citizenship which corresponds to the understanding of citizenship born out of the AKP’s and the Turkish State’s ideological mélange. The use of ideological spolia on these city gates reminds the citizen subjects of Ankara of the ideological-historical features of the dominion they are metaphorically entering. This repetitive entrance into the dominion of the state

66 sets the symbols and cultural elements of the citizenship imposed by Ankara City

Gates, and the builder of the structures, the AKP and the Turkish State.

Although each gate draws their existential energy from being erected on a particular road, thus, from their locations, Eskisehir Road City Gate (Fig. 5) has a two-way relationship with the particular point it was built on. Similar to others, it has the same technical features, steel construction, Nevşehir chalcuite stone-coating, aluminum decoration elements. It is similarly situated on a main highway reaching to the city center and connecting the city to the neighbor cities on the west. What is different in this case is the fact that Eskisehir Road City Gate shapes its location as much as it is shaped by it.

Figure 5 Eskisehir Road City Gate (Erdem, 2014) At the first glance, it is another structure erected by Gökçek that is designed to refer to a certain historical outlook, and reproduce a fictional aesthetic understanding of

Ottoman-Seljuk architecture; and first impressions, in this case, are not faulty.

However, Eskisehir Road City Gate serves these functions and adds a new task upon itself by interacting with the space in which it began to exist as a metaphor. The metaphor of gate gains a material form via Eskisehir Road City Gate, and this

67 materialization is conducted through two favorite things of Turkey, and Ankara of the AKP era: Police force, and construction companies.

Being on a highway connotes with mobility and an accelerated form of sight-seeing.

As the citizen drives a vehicle or sits at the back seats, participates in an activity of unstoppable and fast traveling. The only thing that stops, or even slows down the vehicle is the rules and personnel of the state. In a travel to Ankara, police control points are of frequent nature. Especially if one is on a bus to Ankara, police often check the identification of the travelers due to various security reasons. One of the numerous police control points in Ankara is situated just before the Eskisehir Road

City Gate. As the gate is materially erected, it also started to function as a metaphor of gate to an extent where police find it suitable to establish a control point around the structure. In these identity checks, which are personally experienced by the author of thesis for a number of times, id cards of the travelers of Ankara are checked. If a traveler is not wanted by the police, only then identification is given back to him/her, and he/she is allowed to go into Ankara by going under the city gate. Police become literal gatekeepers of Ankara in these control points.

The second aspect of Eskisehir City Road Gate interacting with its surroundings is the presence of a residential project which is named, not surprisingly, West Gate.

There is a certain degree of ambiguity of the origin of the naming of the project16, however, the interconnectedness between the naming of the residential site, and the literal gate itself suggests a further way of understanding the concept of the entrance of a city. In 2013 piece, an architect/columnist, Esin Tümer introduces the residential

16 The beginning of construction of the residential project dates back to a year earlier than the opening of the city gates (Hürriyet, 2013). Therefore, it would be baseless to argue that the residential project was named after the city gate to be built near its site. Although city development plans might have given inspiration to the owners of the construction firm, it is only a speculation.

68 project with the remark “West Gate, the gate in the West of the Capital City,”

(Tümer, 2013). These words refer to an understanding of a certain capital city and its boundaries; as if Ankara is a fortified city, it has a West side that needed a gate to be opened up. This is a metaphorical investment of the construction project, and with the arrival of the material gate erected by Gökçek, this metaphor of gate to the West become materialized and, in a way, supported. Regardless of the origin of the relation between two structures, the gate and the residential project, intended or unintended, they play into a game of drawing boundaries to the city of Ankara.

The benefits of this metaphorical investment vary for each party involved in this boundary-drawing process. For instance, the construction company becomes able to conduct a public relations campaign in which they argue for the potential hinterland of the project, as it is on an entrance point of the city, a feature implying mobility, traffic, further development. For the ideological authority, having drawn boundaries to the Turkish capital city enables it to further cultivate the metaphorical functions of the gate. In a metaphorical line of thinking, as the boundaries of the city are established, the entity would be in need of a power-holder, an accumulation of power, a state. This metaphorical space can be filled by the same builder of the gate, drawer of the boundaries, the narrator of stories.

Figure 7 As the Author Goes through the Airport Road Figure 6 As the Author Sees a Construction Project City Gate “NORTHGATE” Though not completely realized yet, a similar boundary-drawing relationship occurs in the Northern Ankara, on the Airport Highway, Turgut Özal Boulevard. The

Airport Road City Gate, another structure which bears different symbols, hosts another residential project in its vicinity. This time, the direction gate “opens towards” and the location of the structure is north, thus the residential project is named, unsurprisingly, North Gate. To remind the reader, the technical and material features of the gate resemble other gates, stone-coating with Nevşehir Chalcuite, steel construction, aluminum decorative elements. However, each moment going through an Ankara City Gate (re)produces a distinct experience for the individual.

Above, one can see photographs taken in mobility, “entering” the city from the northern part of Ankara. On the left, the photo shows one of the many moments the author of the thesis sees the Airport Road City Gate. Being exposed to the metaphor of gate, the political-symbolic baggage this gate carries, and the builder of the gate, the traveler sees another metaphor of gate right after going through a literal one. The photograph on the right is taken when the author sees the signboard for a construction project that is titled as a gate. The real-life montage experience between two moments implies a certain sense of entering a city. Moreover, despite the

70 controversial presence of Ankara City Gates in the city, these two examples of construction project named as gates present a strong case for the adaptivity of the city gates into their spatial surroundings. As the gates on their own act as a metaphor of gate, “West Gate” and “North Gate” residential projects play into this metaphorical map. Gates become gates, in their material presence, spatial connections and metaphorical functions.

Figure 8 Virtual Boundaries of Gökçek's Ankara (2019) (Map data taken from Google) In conclusion, the five gates erected by Gökçek serve in their own specific capacities to narrate a selective history, and form new boundaries of Ankara, as it can be seen in the Figure 817. It is almost intuitive to think of the gates in this line of

17 This boundary formation process taking place around Ankara City Gates, and specifically around Eskisehir Road City Gate, and Airport Road City Gate can be put into Lefebvre’s spatial triad, which might further explain the gates’ repercussions and depth. Lefebvre suggests that there are three “registers” (J. Pierce & Martin, 2015, p. 1279) which constitute the social production of space. One of Lefebvre’s registers is “space of representation” which defines a space of “scientists, planners, urbanists, technocratic subdividers and social engineers…” aspiring to identify, sometimes quantify almost everything that “lived, perceived, conceived.” (p. 38-39). This thesis is part this space as it works on Ankara City Gates, and it is pursuing an explanation, a representation of these structures. The map presented as the “Fig. 8” is also a part of this space of representation as it is produced by the author of this thesis, with the help of the public map data provided by a technology company, to show and inquire into the metaphorical boundaries constituted by Ankara City Gates erected by Gökçek.

71 argumentation. A mere observer could also point out that there are symbols attached to these gates, and they belong to a certain political ideological base. He/she could also associate the metaphor of gate with boundaries. In fact, in the section discussing the public response to these gates, there are similar ways citizens conceive the gates built by Gökçek. Both of the easily-recognized functions, however, lead into a more comprehensive reading of the potentiality of the gates. As they serve these functions, narrate the history selectively constructed by power-holders, or form new boundaries for a city that was built almost as a metaphor of modernity point to a position of the builder: A position that does not belong to a particular point in the Turkish political history. At the moment builder’s position is pointed out, the third, and the ultimate, metaphorical function of the gates reveals itself: Positioning the under-stander, subjectifying the citizen of Ankara, culturally reshaping his/her citizenship to put him/her under the gate, thus under the builder. As cultural citizenship is a result of the ceaseless negotiation between the state and the citizen, Ankara City Gates participates in the reproduction of the cultural citizenship in the Ankara of the AKP, by marking, narrating, reminding the ideological-historical elements which belong the AKP and the Turkish State. The power relations schema between the builder and the under-stander plays into the reproduction of the cultural citizenship corresponding to the Ottomanist-nationalist-Islamist-neoliberal ideological conception of the AKP. The citizen subject who inhabits or visits Ankara is reminded

-in a way Billig suggests- by the city gates that he/she metaphorically enters a dominion whose boundaries and stories/symbols are drawn/attached by a particular builder with a particular ideological identity and outlook. In this way, the cultural substance and the hierarchical position of the under-stander (the citizen interpellated

72 by the city gates) are continuously reproduced by Ankara City Gates. In order to further inquire into the city gates of Ankara, the person who represents the AKP and the state occupying the position of the builder, Melih Gökçek’s statements on these gates should be situated in accordance with functions of these spatio-metaphorical structures.

3.2 What a Mayor Talks About When He Talks About Gates

The fives city gates of the Turkish capital city exist in service to an intricate power relations schema in which Gökçek and ideologically rich Akp operate in different and significant capacities. Both Gökçek and the political party he subscribes to have benefited from this power relations schema which constantly reproduces a cultural citizenship in parallel to the AKP’s ideological conceptions and lets the

Turkish State occupy the hierarchically advantaged position of the builder vis-à-vis the disadvantaged mode of subjecthood of the under-stander. However, in terms of both ideological spolia and boundary-formation, Ankara City Gates function within a metaphorical map that does not specifically and necessarily depend on the actualities of modern Turkish politics. The recent electoral change and the preceding forced exit of Gökçek entail the possibility of a power shift in the governance of Ankara. The

AKP lost the control of the metropolitan mayor’s office in Ankara, and even before that Gökçek himself was forced by the president to resign. These developments are part of the actuality of Turkish Politics. The oppositional party has the capacity to shape Ankara once again. However, gates’ endurance, and how the Turkish State, and the AKP -through Gökçek- framed these structures are still able to play into the metaphorical schema between the citizen and the state. In this line of argumentation,

73 the cultural citizenship reproduced by the city gates corresponds to this schematic relation between the gate-builder -the state- and the under-stander -the citizen subject-.

In order to see how Ankara City Gates are framed and positioned by the state, an inquiry into phrases of a significant representative of the AKP and the Turkish State,

Melih Gökçek, must be conducted. Therefore, this study has compiled various news reports on Gökçek’s speeches and broadcasting records and put them into analysis in tandem with Ankara City Gates, and metaphorical presence of these structures.

While doing so, this thesis does not assign an agency to Melih Gökçek. Rather,

Gökçek’s statements are analyzed by seeing this particular mayoral figure as a part of the web of power relations, which ultimately reproduces a cultural citizenship.

Reading Gökçek’s statements and interpreting them in relation to the functions of

Ankara City Gates is a reading made into the processes of subjectification, formation of citizenship realized by the Turkish State, and the AKP through these structures.

The first theme is revealed in various moments where Gökçek justifies the building of these gates with Ankara’s touristic potential. As he answers the question on

Ankara City Gates, he implies that these structures would be open to visits, be touristic landmarks where photographs are taken, and contributing to Ankara’s appeal to the visitors (Beyaz Tv, 2014; Cnn Turk, 2014b). The key concept he uses in this context where he accentuates the gates’ touristic functions regarding “visitors” is the verb of “greeting”. In the opening ceremony, he also uses the word karşılamak

(greeting) to refer to Ankara City Gates’ touristic function. At first glance, this discursive practice of Gökçek associating gates with a pragmatic function of realizing the touristic potential of Ankara, and greeting the visitors of the city seems

74 reasonable. However, the actual state of things contradicts these lines of Gökçek.

Gates are not open to any kind of visits, they are not open to the public, there are no platforms, areas to take photos. Furthermore, gates themselves are not labeled or advertised by the municipality. The discrepancy between the reality -and materiality of the gates- and Gökçek’s framing attempt only disappears on the issue of

“greeting”. As gates stand on main highways, and do not escape, or hide from the sight of the visitor, the inhabitant, or simply the under-stander, the function of greeting uttered by Gökçek still remains observable. Day by day, car by car, under- stander by under-stander, gates remain to exist on main highways of Ankara and to be caught by the eyes of the citizens of Ankara, greeting them to the city in which they already dwell.

Of course, the discrepancy between Gökçek’s promises on gates’ touristic appeal and the actual state of gates can be read as a mundane example of the case of a Turkish politician’s unfulfilled promise. However, Gokcek’s discursive consistency on gates’ greeting aspect has a compelling case for this thesis to argue that Gökçek words correspond to the textual analysis made on Ankara City Gates. “Greeting” in this context becomes an epitomizing denomination made by Gökçek. Greeting can be interpreted along with the concept of cultural citizenship and the theoretical use of

Althusser’s “interpellation”, an act that “hails” the individual, recruit him/her into a subjecthood. In Althusser’s example, the police call a person on the street by shouting “hey you!” (2014, p. 191), the person turns around and get called into a subjecthood before the agent of the state. In the case of Ankara City Gates, and

Gökçek’s discourse around them, the hailing is also non-specific as much as calling someone “hey you!”. In a TV politics talk show recorded before the municipal elections of 2014, Gökçek responds to the critique targeting the 5 gates and the 52

75 watchtowers he built. Following a tense discussion on the public budget, and right- left politics, Gökçek gives a hint on how gates “greet” the citizens of Ankara by the leading the discussion into voters who favor him and the ones who don’t:

“I, with the trust of the ones who vote for me, by consulting the ones

who vote for me, make decisions. Ultimately, I serve all of Ankara.

Through that gate, the one who does not vote for me will pass as many

times as the ones who vote for me will. However, while doing my job,

I will go on by satisfying the ones who vote for me.” (Cnn Turk,

2014b)

These sentences are uttered to respond to the criticism made by journalists to Gökçek on his view that ideological tendencies determine the opinion of the citizens towards his acts. Regardless of the success or failure of the structures he built, he claims that ones from the opposition would oppose any development of his -thus the AKP’s- doing. When he is reminded that he is the mayor of each citizen of Ankara, he states the views cited above. The interesting part in these sentences is the fact that he indeed sees the citizens of Ankara in different camps, divided between his supporters and dissidents. This division can be interpreted as the reason why the AKP -through

Gökçek- pursues a subject-forming agenda in its intervention into Ankara and citizens’ spatial experience. If it means that the dissidents would dislike anything coming from Gökçek and the AKP, it also means that ones who vote for Gökçek are positioned into a subjecthood, a mode of citizenship that approves Gökçek and the

AKP, again in a categorical manner. This is how Gökçek maps the electorate, the citizens of Ankara. He, at once, announces that individuals subscribe to different modes of subjecthood according to their voting preferences. He, as a representative

76 of the AKP and the Turkish State, admits that there are subject positions for each citizen of Ankara. A dissident is recruited in the camp of oppositional ideology, while a supporter of Gökçek and the AKP is already a subject within the power relations schema implied by these statements. This is a powerful hint at what kind of understanding of citizenship is formed within the intricate ideological mélange of the

AKP.

The second interesting part in Gökçek’s words on voters, dissidents and who will pass through the gates of Ankara, is the totalistic attitude of the Turkish State.

“Serving all of Ankara” can mean two things. Firstly, in a straightforward legalistic way, a public office requires the incumbent to serve all citizens regardless of their differences in any category. However, Gökçek cancels this type of interpretation with his last sentence: “I will go on by satisfying the ones who vote for me.” He does not aim to pursue a totalistic “satisfaction”, he does not go after a legal-rational codification of his powers to serve all. What he does by saying he serves “all of

Ankara” is that he suggests his service make him the mayor of all, positions the AKP above all. The idea of satisfying a part of the electorate reinforces this idea, Gökçek’s words suggest that the AKP and the Turkish State only accept to aid the individuals who are recruited into a subjecthood, a cultural citizenship. This totalistic attitude observed in Gökçek’s statements is not an idealistic instance of modern day bureaucracy, but a consequence of the Turkish State’s regard of the citizen subjects in Ankara and any other Turkish city, who are to be either positioned under the state or outside of the service provided.

Ankara City Gates’ metaphorical and material presence can be explained better in an analytical picture if the statements are interpreted accordingly. İbrahim Melih

Gökçek, a person who served in the office of Metropolitan Municipality of Ankara for more than twenty years, announces how he regards the citizens of Ankara, how he positions each one of them vis-à-vis their voting preferences, and, how he aims to

“satisfy” a certain mode of subjecthood, a certain type of citizen. These lines actually hint at how the AKP and the Turkish State instrumentalize Ankara City Gates to

“greet” the visitors, the citizens of Ankara. After all, “… through that gate, the one who does not vote for me [Gökçek] will pass as many times as the ones who vote for me [him] will,”, therefore this totalistic attitude towards the citizens of Ankara can be maintained by these structures. Gates stand over the main arteries of Ankara, regardless of the political preference of the under-standers, however, they also, again in a totalistic manner, “greet” each one of the individuals standing under them. This greeting can be situated in the approach of the AKP and the Turkish State towards their citizens, an approach based on the ceaseless act of interpellating citizens.

After putting forth an interpretation of Gökçek’s statements on Ankara City Gates’ greeting aspect and how he sees his electorate within a map of subjectification, the next thing to look for would be Ankara’s former mayor’s take on the symbolism attached to Ankara City Gates. Gökçek is relatively clearer for this part, using specific ethnic, imperial references, and linking the architecture, decoration, and symbolism of the gates to a selectively constructed history of Ankara within a connected network consisting of Konya, Eskişehir, Samsun, and İstanbul. Revisiting

Gökçek’s speech at the opening ceremony held in the Konya Road City Gate, an attentive reader would realize in seconds that the builder/mayor indeed repetitively rejoices over the fact that Ankara City Gates’ are selectively adorned and attached with symbols and ideological references:

“All of our gates carry revelations from Seljuk and Ottoman

architecture, so they reflect our history. The details in the ornaments

are the cultural heritage of the civilizations lived in Anatolia, of

Seljuks, and of the Ottoman. This heritage is re-applied onto steel,

which is the modern constructions technique, in a way that is

predominantly carrying the traces of the Seljuk and the Ottoman. Each

of our gates carries traces of the cities they are named after.”

(Haberturk, 2014)

This passage firstly reveals how much the concept of “Ottoman-Seljuk”, a constructed cultural claim of the AKP, is emphasized by Melih Gökçek. In a quantitative manner, three of the four sentences which introduce the symbolism on

Ankara City Gates contain the phrases “Seljuk” and “Ottoman”. This consistency is not a product of a biased selection of the passage, in other occasions in which

Gökçek talks of the gates, he consistently refers to an “Ottoman-Seljuk” aesthetic, architectural understanding. Although he also briefly mentions “civilizations lived in

Anatolia”, he immediately mentions the Seljuk and the Ottomans as if to compensate this aberration, if not to suggest civilizations are limited to these two. Ankara City

Gates, at least for Gökçek, implies a history of Ankara and Turkey that consists of certain empires. In parallel to the consistent use of the octagonal Seljuk star, cupolas,

Islamic figures, nationalistic elements in the decoration of the gates, Gökçek’s emphasis on the Ottoman-Seljuk concludes picture. A builder adorns what he built with his own symbols. An under-stander stands under the builder’s symbols. In this case, the power relation dictated by Ankara City Gates is marked by Gökçek with his reference to the Ottomans and the Seljuks. It marks the subjectification, “greeting” process with an ideological specificity.

Connecting this passage from the opening ceremony to his words on satisfying his voters, the phrase “our history” becomes open to further interpretation. As Ankara

City Gates are capable of carrying a limited number of symbols, decorations elements and architectural features on them -plus a selective curation process seems to have taken place-, the multiple histories of the citizens of Ankara, and Turkey is rendered into a once again a totalistic, selective historical narration. The effort to recruit individuals into a subjecthood becomes more articulate in this aspect of

Gökçek’s words. When Gökçek says “our”, the implied crowd would not be an inclusive one. As he already maps the citizens of Ankara according to their ideological and voting preferences, the “our” in “our history” is more of a crowd of citizen subject recruited into a subjecthood in parallels with the understanding of citizenship of the AKP and the Turkish State. This is a part of what the author of this thesis project calls “ideological spolia.” As different ideological elements are gathered and attached to Ankara City Gates to present “the cultural heritage”, it is observed that there is an act of assertion of a power relations schema and an understanding of citizenship through an ideological-historical narration. As the substance of citizenship is refilled by this mélange of symbols and patterns, the ideological basis of the AKP and the Turkish State -an ideological mélange represented by a mélange of symbolisms- participates in the negotiation to (re)form the cultural citizenship of the citizens of Ankara.

Overall, at the surface, Ankara City Gates are framed as urban structures built to generate more touristic revenue for the city. In this level of Gökçek’s discourse, we see a technocratic municipal approach towards the building practice, a municipal leader trying to add value to the city he is elected to serve. The emphasis on tourism is observed in several occasions (Cnn Turk, 2014a, 2014b; Haberturk Tv, 2014;

Beyaz Tv, 2014), however, this emphasis is mostly a justification attempt to explain the genesis of these structures. The process right after the opening ceremony reveals this function of the emphasis on tourism because there have been no municipal plans to open Ankara City Gates to touristic visits. On the contrary, gates were mostly exclusive structures that even did not enable pedestrians to cross over the busy highways. The discrepancy between lack of pragmatic functions of the city gates and

Gökçek’s framing attempt leads this study to seek deeper discursive levels. As it has been shown above, Gökçek’s -thus the AKP’s and the Turkish State’s- totalistic attitude towards the electorate, and his binary approach subjectifying his supporters and dissidents correspond to the analysis made on Ankara City Gates. On the one hand, there are five city gates built to imply a new sense of boundaries to citizens and present a selective historical narration through the “ideological spolia”. On the other hand, there is a metropolitan mayor, a representative of the AKP and the Turkish

State, who consistently refers to Ankara City Gates as vessels of Ottoman-Seljuk architecture, and inevitable passing points for each citizen of Ankara, regardless of their voting preferences. The conclusion that can be derived from the interpretation of what Gökçek says of these gates is first these structures are taken by the state as not touristic landmarks. Rather, we observe an emphasis on tourism as a justificatory tool and the idea in certain lines that Ankara City Gates are representative of a specific ideological basis -which is partly nationalist, partly Ottomanist, partly

Islamist, and neoliberal in various ways-. However, in Gökçek’s sentences, gates do not only represent, but also impose an ideology, and a cultural citizenship, a mode of subjecthood through their location, materiality and more importantly their identity constructed by the fact that the builder of these structures is Gökçek, thus the AKP and the Turkish State.

3.3 Angry Architects and Confused Citizens: A Sketch of Public Response

A philosophical mind experiment, which is still in circulation as a part of the popular culture, asks “if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” The puzzling question has important philosophical ramifications including questions like whether God is around the forest, or if perception determines the reality. Luckily it is also of importance to the case of Ankara City Gates if the question is translated accordingly: “If gates had been built somewhere and no one is around to stand under and talk about them, would they still subjectify?”. The answer revolves around the concept of subjectification, and the process of interpellation, which are indeed interactive in their depths. One is interpellated into a power relation schema like the citizen called out by the police from behind in Althusser’s explanations (2014, p. 190), and he/she answers this call one way or another. It is acceptable that gates’ presence is inevitable, imposing one since they require the citizens to stand under, pass through them as they travel on a highway. It is also possible that this inevitability renders these gates as totalistic structures reigning over all. However, the citizens who are called into a subjecthood has still options to respond to both material and metaphorical presence of Ankara City Gates. And one way to inquire into how citizens consider their options is taking the public response as textual material.

Rather than conducting a survey with a large sample, this study goes through instances of public response. Specifically, it analyzes a press release collectively made by various architects’ associations, a column piece written for an architectural culture website, and an interview made with citizens right after the gates were erected. This way, this thesis project acquires the chance to analyze a textual body

82 that is constituted without an intervention by a designed research effort. In other words, what has been written on Ankara City Gates, the textual accumulation happens relatively in its own accord. However, the importance of survey inquiries cannot be underestimated. For instance, Tekel and Aslan (2016) study how Ankara

City Gates, Airport Road and Konya Road City Gates in particular, are perceived by the actual citizens who have been living in Ankara for at least 3 years. They map the perceptions of the respondents in terms of “organization,” “meaning,” and

“evaluation,” (p. 35); and this certainly produces a scientific data to further understand how citizens evaluate the gates as part of the city aesthetics. The textual approach towards how Ankara City Gates occupy a place in the imagination of the citizens of Ankara complements this type of survey research, and enable it to test a further hypothesis, such as how people perceive gates in terms of subjectification.

Ankara City Gates firstly leads to an effort to figure out what these structures mean.

One of the most systematic attempts to see this meaning, and also protest the construction of the gates is a joint press release (2014) written by four architects’ associations18. In six articles, the associations present a furious case explaining why the construction of Ankara City Gates should be stopped immediately. Beneath the anger, however, the press release continuously refers to the general metaphorical aspect of the gates. Associations protest the construction of these gates by pointing out the resemblance to the tradition of victory arches in the European architecture.

After disavowing this sort of outdated municipal practice, the press release starts to give historical details about the “gates of Ankara castle which endured until the first years of the 20th century”, which are İstanbul Gate, Sivas Gate, İzmir Gate, and

18 It should be noted that architects’ and city planners’ associations play an indispensable role in Ankara and other Turkish cities. Especially through applying to judicial authorities, these associations become a part of the negotiation process of building monuments in Ankara.

Çankırı Gate. Similar to the appeal of historical sources for the AKP such as Evliya

Çelebi, the press release also renders history as a modern source for a political statement, this time a protest against Ankara City Gates. The text becomes more interesting, as associations start to ridicule the idea of constructing literal, material gates on the entrance of a city and gives a list of metaphors about gates:

“The gate in the game of backgammon, the gate of state, the gate of

income, the gate of expenditure, computer portal and alike

entrance/passing components cannot be literally in the shape of a

door. These are abstractions, they are smiled upon when they become

concrete. Better ways to make people of Ankara smile should be

thought of. … through these ‘fake victory arches,’ only the

contractors can smile.” (Türk Serbest Mimarlar Derneği, Mimarlar

Derneği 1927, Mimarlar Odası Ankara Şubesi, & Koruma ve

Restorasyon Uzmanları Derneği, 2014)

Although the tone of the text has a sarcastic note by ultimately blaming the municipality of patronage, this press release identifies how the metaphor of the gate is inherent to the construction of Ankara City Gates. The sarcasm and listing of the gate metaphors can be interpreted as subversively protesting discursive practices vis-

à-vis the metaphorical functions of Ankara City Gates which try to reproduce a certain mode of cultural citizenship and recruit the citizens into a mode of subjecthood. The anger, and the call to shut-down the project actually fits the metaphorical map this thesis project presents; because the anger is indicative of how the associations take Gökçek’s attempt as a serious act. Especially, the emphasis on the absurdity of building literal gates by mistaking the metaphor for reality shows how Ankara City Gates has the capacity to evoke the metaphor of gate in relation to

84 victorious arches in the history, and thus, the victorious rulers building those gates.

The absolute rejection of the city gates by the press release does not alter this function of the gates. How architects remind that there are already historical gates in the city, and in the memory of the citizens, and how the text tries to ridicule the construction project with problematizing the metaphorical aspect of the gates are strong cases to suggest that gates function to call individuals -and architects- into a subjecthood, regardless of the anger and rejection in their response back.

The struggle to comprehend the meaning of the gates also reverberates in columns in various papers, and websites. While most of the public intellectuals and journalists problematize their quest of understanding (and under-standing) Ankara City Gates in relation to their cost, there are also rare cases in which the writer confronts the investment made in the meaning of these gates. Ali Uzay Peker (2014), as a historian of architecture,19 chooses to shares his refined opinions on Ankara City Gates via online means. After discussing the historical adventure of the concept of gates, and their relation to power and the sovereign, he presents a brief analysis of Ankara City

Gates in comparison to other modern arches. He concludes his analysis of the structures, which he calls “rude arabesque structures”, by asking a question: Do these gates represent “victory”? Although he does not give a clear answer, he seems to take these structures as possible bearers of the sense of victory, which Peker believes to be attached by Gökçek and his political party. This informative column piece is the interpretation closest to this thesis project. However, the more important feature of

19 Professor Peker has an important place in the history-writing of Ottoman and Seljuk architecture. His seminal works include works on the civilization of Seljuk Empire (Ocak, Peker, & Bilici, 2006), and a specific regard for deeper meanings hidden in the architectural structures. In such a work, he deals with the construction of the Nuruosmaniye mosque, and suggests that mosque is a product of a negotiation process between bedesten folk and the sultan. It is almost a political-metaphorical reading of a place (Peker, 2016).

85 this text is the fact that how deeply Peker problematized “rude arabesque structures”.

Similar to the anger observed in the joint press release, another architect, and a historian utterly rejects to be interpellated into a cultural citizenship by Ankara City

Gates by questioning which victory these gates represent.

In his rejection, Peker reveals and participates in the ultimate function of Ankara

City Gates. He deciphers how ideological spolia is used on these gates -although he quickly concludes this use is a result of nostalgia of the ancient victories-, he situates these gates in a historical line as he is the expert, however at the end, his denying tone, and out-of-the-blue conclusion that these gates should have been built in cooperation with the architects, and the citizens through competitions and surveys points at his reaction to be interpellated by these structures. His expert analysis and anger is born out of and directed towards Ankara City Gates. He, at the same textual moment, reject and under-stands these city gates. Gökçek -thus the AKP and the

Turkish State-, once again, becomes the builder, and, Peker, like thousands of others, becomes an under-stander.

When this thesis moves its lens from angry architects to other elements of the public response to Ankara City Gates, it finds confused citizens. Although the author of the thesis realizes that an ethnographic inquiry the gates should be done in future works, and encountered numerous people who believe in or entertain the idea that Ankara

City Gates are enchanted with various types of magic; this study focuses on the textual material that is independently collected and put into circulation. A valuable textual data comes from a street-interview clip published by BBC Türkçe news service. Just before the municipal elections, BBC Türkçe (2014) conducted interviews with the voters in Ankara. The broadcasted version of these interviews includes a final section in which the journalist asks the citizens about the newly-

86 erected “Ankara City Gates”. Although the political atmosphere and the broader context of the municipal elections were fixed on certain discussions about corruption and party-politics; the questions on how the city gates were perceived seem to matter more in terms of this thesis project. For instance, one of the last questions asked in the interview is whether the respondent is living “inside” or “outside” of the gates.

More surprisingly, interviewed citizens show serious regard for this question, answering they are outside, or inside. As if the moment these gates were constructed, there emerged a new idea of what inside and outside of Ankara is, different than legal borders of the province.

Along with the argumentation of this thesis, the inside-outside dichotomy can be argued to be a product of these gates’ boundary-drawing function. However, once again, we see an interactive side to a metaphorical function of Ankara City Gates.

Naturally, the interviewed citizens do not answer the “inside-outside question” with absolute conformism to the new schema gates produced. Rather, each respondent presents a sarcastic, somewhat puzzled attitude towards the existence of gates.

Especially the ones outside stress out the incomprehensibility of Ankara City Gates.

A respondent living in Dikmen suggests she lives “outside” of the city gates, but she cannot “make sense the purpose of putting that gate there.” Then, the same respondent answers the question “whether she feels excluded” by stating that “it seems like he [Gökçek] divided the city. Maybe he left Dikmen out because it is in

Çankaya.” The respondent seems to acknowledge that the gate functions to draw a new boundary, and she is left outside, but she remains looking for a meaning behind the construction of the gate. This pursuit of meaning has two sides to it. First, the citizen implies that these structures are devoid of meaning, and a practical function.

Secondly, though, the citizen also shows an indication of a need to respond to the

87 existence and boundary-drawing function of the city gate, which makes her also an under-stander. Also, the rapidness of the gates in reminding Gökçek, thus the AKP is the builder of them is hard to go unnoticed. The respondent even jokes about how

Dikmen is left out because it is part of Çankaya, a populated district consistently voting for the opposition. Despite the respondent’s oppositional humor, the fact that she remembers party politics in connection to the city gates is another indication of

Ankara City Gates function to interpellate. The citizen sees the gate and remembers the builder. Her further comments on the moment of under-standing only consolidate how she is recruited into a subjecthood whose substance and position is negotiated and put forth by the ideological mélange of the builder, the AKP and the Turkish

State.

Another puzzled citizen who lives “outside” is asked, “what he felt when he first saw an Ankara City Gate,”. His response is in parallels with the previous under-stander, he suggests that he “…could not find any meaning to invest this much while there are so many problems in the country.” His response, like the press release of the architects’ associations, is linked to concerns regarding the cost of constructing these structures. However, the pursuit of meaning in his first sight points at a metaphorical level. Since the citizen could not find any meaning to the Ankara City Gate, he passes under a structure devoid of meaning and nonetheless constructed. Noting the protest in his words that there are other urgent problems instead of building a city gate, this moment of under-standing is almost a tragic one; because it shows that the under-stander is bound to pass through the gate regardless of he/she finds it a necessary investment. It is a moment of powerlessness, an ideal mode of subjecthood for a builder of a city gate which greets this subject into a citizenship reproduced with selective cultural elements.

3.4 Lives and Deaths of Gates in Anatolia: A Story of Dissemination

As the analysis made on Ankara City Gates and the plausible interpretation of

Gökçek’s statements on these structures correspond to each other, there remains an extension of the phenomenon of building gates and talking about. Although Ankara

City Gates constitute an outstanding situation, building gates is a practice that disseminated among various municipal authorities which belong to the same ideological basis as Gökçek does, the mélange of Ottomanism-nationalism-Islamism- neoliberalism put forth by the AKP. Incorporating different instances of gate- building practices in Anatolia into the discussion of Ankara City Gates enables this project to compare and contrast its case study. Moreover, since all gates are not able to thrive, or even survive, discussing different cases presents the possibility of observing how a gate fails or succeeds in forming subjects, boundaries and using the ideological spolia. To this date, there have been numerous attempts of building gates on behalf of counties, towns, universities, and even organized industrial sites. Some of these practices predate Ankara City Gates such as the gates with banners

“Welcome to…”; also, there is an identifiable trend preceding the city gates of

Ankara in different parts of Anatolia. For instance, Çankırı Municipality has actually built gates to locations deemed as entrance points to these cities.

Figure 9 "Yaren Gate" built in Çankırı (Çankırı Belediyesi)

In the picture above, Çankırı City Gate, “Yaren Gate”, which was built by Çankırı

Municipality between the years 2004-2009 (Çankırı Belediyesi), presents strong parallels to Ankara City Gates. Designed in a simpler way, this Çankırı City Gate mostly gives out the symbolic connection to an image of a fortress. This time the columns on the sides of the road are completed with bastions and two Turkish flags on the top. By this way, the “Yaren Gate” seems to serve two metaphorical functions of drawing boundaries to Çankırı, and presenting the ideological spolia attached unto them. The bastions, flags and the fortress design correspond to the design of Ankara

City Gates. Çankırı City Gate’s metaphorical functions seem to align with its future counterparts. As the gate provides a selective historical/ideological symbolism through the bastions and the flags, the fortress gate design also presents a sense of boundary to its under-standers. Ultimately, it is difficult to construct a chronological line of gates built in Anatolia, since the design and construction process in Ankara

90 dates back to 1990s. However, with its minimalist design, the Çankırı City Gate at least serves as a prototypical example to contrast Ankara City Gates.

Figure 10 One of the two Kütahya Gates (Ayhan, 2018)

Moreover, there are gates built after Ankara City Gates’ erection in 2014. For instance, in Kütahya, the municipality built two gates in the city’s connections to two neighboring towns. The former mayor of Kütahya promised these gates before the election of 2014 and fulfilled his promise by the end of 2018 (Diken, 2018). Again, the gates’ metaphorical presence as entrance points to an area enables them to draw new boundaries to Kütahya. This time, the gate above seems to follow the design pattern of Ankara City Gates, with cupolas, decorative elements attached to the arch, and the stone-coating used in the making of the structure. There is certain parallelism on the issue of reference to “Seljuk architecture.” In a speech introducing the project, the former mayor of Kütahya, Kamil Saraçoğlu states that these gates would carry

“Seljuk motives and glazed tiles,” (Kütahya Arşiv, 2017). The ideological spolia on

Kütahya gates are in service as the more complex ideological spolia on Ankara City

Gates are, and they refer to a selective historical/ideological narration that is similar to the city gates of Ankara. However, differently from Gökçek’s ambitious project,

91 there are only two gates in Kütahya, and they use symbols mostly belonging to the locality of Kütahya. This difference leads this research to suggest that Gökçek’s gate- building practice constitutes a powerful -if not original- instance for other Akp municipalities to follow. Five Ankara City Gates bare symbols from various cities, empires, time frames, and ideological sources. While Gökçek built gates, which are more assertive in symbolism, number and budget, other gates in Anatolia provide minimalistic instances of gate-building, regardless of their building dates. In other words, although Ankara City Gates stand in between the chronological line of building gates in the modern Turkish Republic, their metaphorical functions, and them being built in Ankara by one of the most known mayors of the AKP, Ankara

City Gates provide a metaphorical function kit and new meaning to gates built outside of Ankara.

This central value of Ankara City Gates renders them a model for other Akp municipalities. Even, Melih Gökçek himself helped to build a gate in the small county of Göynük in Bolu. In a newspaper piece, this building process is defined with phrases similar to how Ankara City Gates are framed and introduced by Gökçek himself. In the opening ceremony of the gate in 2016 (image provided in Fig. 11), the mayor of Göynük Kemal Kazan suggests that Göynük is “… an Ottoman city,” and this gate “carries traces of Ottoman architecture,” (Anadolu Ajansı, 2016). As a more modest and minimalistic city gate, Göynük Gate (see Fig. 11) smoothly reproduces the functions of Ankara City Gates. Gates’ alleged architectural references to

“Ottoman architecture”, religious inscriptions, the Ottoman imperial symbol on the top, and the Turkish flags constitute the ideological spolia attached on the gate. statements of Gökçek and the mayor of Göynük resemble each other in positioning the under-standers of the Göynük Gate to conceive the county as a dominion

92 belonging to an Ottoman past. Moreover, the gates are built on the boulevard which connects the county to Bolu. Once again, built on a point that is perceived as an entrance to the country, the gate also serves to draw boundaries to Göynük. Further, with the fact that this gate is gifted by Gökçek and his wife to the county of Göynük, it can be argued that Ankara City Gates also has the ability to exist as models for other gates in Anatolia. Gökçek personally contributes to this process, which can be seen in the case of Göynük.

Figure 11 Göynük Gate with a piece of inscribed advice from Akşemseddin (Advisor of Mehmed II): “Begin every work with the name of Allah” (Haberturk, 2016)

Speaking of models, one aspect of determining a model is the unavoidable failures of applying it to other localities. The constitution of early republican Ankara, for instance, “functioned” as a model for the other urban localities across the newly- founded republic (Çınar, 2005, p. 101). Early Republican Ankara being a model is similar to how Ankara City Gates occupies a central position in consideration of the other gates in Anatolia, in terms of materiality, location, and investment in meaning.

Early-Republican meaning-making, metaphorical-mapping processes are actually similar to Gökçek’s practices’ impact on his own network of municipalities.

Simply, this interesting parallelism, model-instance relation between different cities in Anatolia suggest there are similar understandings of municipal governance finding value in erecting gates. However, this adventure of finding a pattern in between different gates of mostly conservative counties, cities has another side. It does not always mean that connectedness of these cities with gates impairs their locality and specificity. A gate surviving in Ankara, or Kütahya besides heavy criticisms may not endure in a different local context, even if their electorate mostly votes for the AKP.

The same practice of building a gate may lead to the formation of a totally different subject. For Kütahya, Çankırı, or Göynük, gates are built in a top-down manner, similar to the gate-building practice in Ankara. Although bearing more local symbols, each gate refers to shared historical narrative connoting with a mélange notion of Ottoman-Seljuk culture; therefore, each gate is after forming a subjecthood exists in a map reproduced by the same ideological basis. However, in some cases, gates built or planned by the agents of the same ideological group do not succeed in forming a subject, or avoid being destroyed by its audience, both literally and metaphorically, both before and after construction.

There are two dramatic cases of failure to build gates for cities without walls. Firstly, there is the case of unborn gates of Elazığ Municipality. The municipal adventure starts off with a public bidding document. The municipality, which wants to pick a company to build three gates to the city, writes up a noticeable standard in the bidding notice. It is clearly stated by the municipality that the contractor should

“benefit from the models of the gates built in Ankara,” (Boyacıoğlu, 2015). This line clearly supports the argument that Ankara City Gates literally function as models for other Anatolian municipalities; yet, it is not sufficient to replicate the design of a subject-formation technique to succeed in subjectification.

Following the bidding process, the municipality opens an online survey for picking the most popular gate design for the city. Although they take Ankara City Gates as a model, the Eastern-Anatolian city follows a refined path of building gates. Counting on the ones who would pass through the gates is a newer approach if Ankara and other Anatolian cases are taken into comparison. However, both following Gökçek and then adding a new step to the process of gate-building makes it more and more hard to replicate the model Gökçek built. The online survey ends on the 1st of

February, 2016. Suddenly, in late February, the mayor Mücahit Yanılmaz announces in a local TV station that the project of building three gates to the entrances of the city is canceled (El-Aziz, 2016). Although it is hard to follow a local public discussion, the criticisms towards unborn gates of Elazığ concentrate on the low- level of urgency and cost of these structures. These criticisms are similar to the public discussion around Ankara City Gates. The fundamental difference between the building processes of Elazığ and Ankara is the moment of opening the design process to the public. Seeking popular consent for gates to form subjects, bear symbols of the builder and draw new boundaries to a city is a contradictory act. This

95 new pluralistic flavor added by the mayor who emphasizes the necessity of gates resembling Ankara City Gates correlates with the mayor’s failure to erect his gates.

Figure 12 Sultan Abdulhamid Han Gate of Haymana being destructed (Haymana Gazetesi, 2015) Simply, there is not supposed to be a convincing process, gates themselves function to impose a certain ideological power-setting to their under-standers. A municipal authority trying to include the citizens to a process of building structures unable to produce pragmatic results does not stand in parallel to Gökçek’s case of building gates standing over the citizens of Ankara, requiring them to stand under, become subjects of the dominion of the builder, the AKP and the Turkish State. In other words, Elazığ’s unborn city gates as a process contradict with the ultimate function of gate-building: Subjectification. Taking Ankara City Gates as a model is not always sufficient to realize a project of building a gate that does not ask its under- standers to stand under. It is supposed to impose them to do so, to become so.

A second and probably even more dramatic instance of failure revolves around a gate once constructed in Haymana, Ankara. This structure’s design (see Fig. 12) shares similar patterns parallel to Ankara City Gates’, even though its construction predates

Ankara City Gates20. For instance, as an obvious act of using ideological spolia, the mayor who built the gate named it after an Ottoman sultan, Abdulhamit II. The mayor, who is also a member of the AKP, follows the same idea of attaching an

Ottoman/Seljuk symbol to the gate. Doing this more openly, and inscribing the name of the sultan embraced by the AKP on a gate checks the investment in meaning criteria. Also, the gate is built in an imposing manner. Despite the opposition in the city council, the mayor insists on building the gate, and he accomplishes. However, this time, the failure of the gate to survive comes from its location. Checking the boxes of ideological spolia and subject-forming arbitrariness, Sultan Abdulhamid

Han Gate is built very close to the town center. In the end, after series of criticisms, and a change in the office of mayor, “Sultan Abdul Hamid Han Kapısı” was destroyed with a majority decision taken by the city council, and general approval of the citizens of Haymana. An interesting input on this provincial saga comes from

Şevket Çorbacıoğlu, a columnist cited by the local newspaper of Haymana:

“The Sultan Abdulhamit Han Gate made no sense to me. Gökçek

started these projects. I am not against city gates, but … these should

be constructed where the boundaries of the city start so that a first-

time visitor can construct the city in his/her imagination, burn the city

in his/her mind…” (Haymana Gazetesi, 2015)

Although Çorbacıoğlu problematizes the location of the city gate of Haymana, his justification for opposition to this gate comes from a non-material standpoint. Rather than referring to traffic problems gate caused, or possibilities of patronage in the

20 The idea of building a gateway to a modern Turkish city most probably dates back to Ankara. Building a gateway that is ideological-loaded with Islamist, Ottomanist, nationalist symbols comes from Gökçek himself in his first years at the office. For more information on this, see Çalışkan (2010).

97 making of this structure; he focuses on the metaphorical failure of the gate in relation to its location. After a quick reference to Gökçek, and how he started this trend, he describes the function of the gates. Location of the structures matters as much as the ideological spolia attached to them. If the new boundaries are drawn by the gates in a manner that does not acknowledge the sense of entrance in the metaphor of gate,

“construction of a city [ruled by the builder of the gate] in a visitor’s imagination” cannot be realized. As the visitor -the first-time visitor for Çorbacıoğlu- sees the gates, he/she is supposed to conceive the idea about the city proposed by the gates.

This process corresponds and leads to a much deeper process, subject-formation. In a way, what Çorbacıoğlu implies is an imaginative (re)construction of the city, thus the citizen. If a city is reconstructed, then everyone becomes a first-time visitor into the reconstructed space. Citizen, a concept dependent on the concept of the city, is destined to be interpellated, reconstructed via structures. However, in this case, life and death of the Sultan Abdulhamid Han gate of Haymana show that a failure to be built on an inconvenient location leads to a failure to establish processes of drawing the city’s boundaries and ultimately subject formation. Ankara City Gates are more easily considered as a model for successful metaphorical structures that present a selective ideological-historical narration through ideological spolia, draw boundaries to the dominion of the builder through their location, and interpellate/recruits individuals into being under-standers, a mode of subjecthood, a cultural citizenship of new Turkey. These two failed cases of gate-building provide a strong contrast to how Ankara City Gates are instrumentalized, and accentuate the experience of gate- building in Ankara as a model for other municipal gate-builders, who are exclusively members of the same political party, the AKP.

CHAPTER IV

CONCLUSION: THE BUILDER AND THE UNDER-STANDER

“There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

There is another theory which states that this has already happened.” Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

In terms of quality of writing, this concluding section should have ended with the epigraph above. Nevertheless, ending a thesis with a witty protest towards the

Universe might be deemed inconvenient. Fortunately, the epigraph opens up enough space to build a conclusion to our social-scientific discovery of “what Ankara City

Gates are for and why they are there.” Although İbrahim Melih Gökçek is not currently in the office of Ankara Metropolitan Municipality, the city gates of Ankara still remain untouched by the succeeding mayor from the opposition. Still, day by day, thousands of citizens in cars pass beneath and/or through these gates, and acquire a moment to be able to remember/question how built these structures were built in the passage between the winter and spring of 2014.

This thesis tries to reveal the hidden functions of these city gates, which are mostly regarded as deprived of any practicality. The overall argument is that Ankara City

Gates are spatio-metaphorical structures which render individuals passing by as

99 citizen-subjects, who subscribe to a mode of cultural citizenship that is reproduced in parallel with the understanding of citizenship of the AKP and the Turkish State on a continuing basis. The understanding of citizenship of the AKP and the state is an imposing, hierarchical one, which can be observed in how the city gates of Ankara are built and imposed on the citizens. Moreover, the cultural substance of the citizenship reproduced through these structures is of a conflated nature, since there is a conflation of symbols observable on the gates. Citizens of Ankara are subjectified into a citizenship which is marked to be Ottoman, Turkish nationalist, Islamist and neoliberal. The result of this subjectification process is called by this thesis project as the under-stander. An individual who stands under the gate becomes a citizen- subject, an under-stander, as he/she understands that it is built by the AKP and the

Turkish State, it draws new boundaries to Ankara, and it bears different ideological patterns and symbols belonging to the builder. In the manner of unraveling hidden meanings, this thesis first acquires and combines various theoretical tools to inquire into Ankara City Gates. Benefiting from human geographers, architects and city planners to comprehend how spatial in a two-way relationship with social -and/or political-; from linguists, specifically Lakoff, to see the possibility of a metaphor not only expressing what it belongs to but also shaping the social reality around itself; from political scientists to observe how an individual is transformed into a subject within a certain understanding of citizenship, this paper makes an attempt to take

Ankara City Gates as metaphorical structures as much as they are material, spatial ones. Doing so, it aims to analyze Ankara City Gates existing materially within the

Turkish capital city and functioning metaphorically in the public imagination of

Ankara.

100

There are three distinguishable but inter-connected metaphorical functions assigned to Ankara City Gates which let the AKP and the state to reproduce a power-relations schema between the state and the subject, a mode of cultural citizenship that can also be found in the ideological basis of the AKP. First, as the metaphor of gate initially and strongly evokes senses of entrance and boundaries, Ankara City Gates has the initial metaphorical function to draw boundaries. Although Ankara has certain boundaries drawn by legal authorities through city plans, maps, and laws, Ankara

City Gates create a new sense of boundaries for Ankara, leading to the production of a dominion associated with the builder of the structures, the AKP and ultimately of the Turkish State. This function is observable in gates’ surroundings in the form of two luxurious residential projects called after gates, “West Gate Residence”, and

“North Gate Residence”. Also, around some of the city gates, there are police control points which further contribute to the production of new boundaries to Ankara, new moments for citizens to enter the city. This metaphorical function of drawing boundaries is also observable in the response of the under-standers themselves.

Especially in the street interview analyzed, responses of the citizens who live

“outside” the gates point at the success of Ankara City Gates to draw boundaries, evoke a sense of “inside” of a dominion belonging to a political authority, the AKP, and the Turkish State. This metaphorical function leads to the moment of interpellation of the individual, since the under-stander, regardless of his/her taste of the gate, is bound to think over what these gates constitute, open to. Moreover, the boundaries drawn is in a dynamic relationship with the sense of entrance, which is a primary connotation of the city gates of Ankara. The citizen subject enters into a metaphorical dominion in which a new mode of cultural citizenship is practiced. The tricky part is the fact that Ankara City Gates do not provide a chance to the citizen

101 subjects avoid entering into the newly-formed dominion. This is firstly because of the fact that they are positioned on main highways of the Turkish capital city.

Secondly, both sides of the city gates denote a sense of entrance: An entrance into a citizenship that cannot culturally avoided.

The second metaphorical function of Ankara City Gates is the use of ideological spolia in the design and symbolism of these structures. Ideological spolia is a theoretical invention of this thesis to conceive this abundance of symbols and aesthetic patterns on the structures built by a political figure. The concept suggests that use of ideological symbols, and patterns ideologically constructed such as

“Ottoman-Seljuk architecture” points at an attempt to communicate power and represent a selective ideological-historical narration. By being built to bear various symbols from different ideological sources of the AKP (octagonal Seljuk star, the crescent, and star, and Mevlana), Ankara City Gates becomes capable of imposing ideological symbols and putting forth an ideological-historical narration towards their under-standers. Although each gate has a significant and distinct ideological spolia use upon them, they also constitute a grand narrative that is parallel to the ideological mélange of the AKP and the Turkish State. A citizen subject that is interpellated into a cultural citizenship via Ankara City Gates rendered Turk,

Ottoman-Seljuk, Muslim and neoliberal.

Lastly, these two metaphorical functions serve to the ultimate end of interpellating and subjectifying the individuals who pass through the gates. As the individuals are required to encounter these structures, experience a new sense of boundaries, confront a selective ideological-historical narration; they become under-standers.

Remembering Gökçek’s statement that anyone will pass under these gates regardless

102 of their voting preferences and that he would keep “satisfying” the ones who vote for him, this study suggests that Ankara City Gates render each citizen an under-stander, in a quite totalistic way. Because, indeed everyone is bound to see and stand under these structures, which are built a builder who divides his electorate into two camps and admits that he only aims to satisfy his supporters. If Gökçek’s -the AKP’s- dissidents had the option not to pass through these structures, Ankara City Gates would have been structures less of a subject-forming nature, since its under-standers would be already willingly recruited into a subjecthood that advantages the AKP and the Turkish State. However, the gates’ totalistic presence in the city gives them a higher-functioning status. Ankara City Gates especially target ones who could not find the meaning of these structures, who protest both the materialistic and metaphorical presence of them.

For a second, imagine the spatial experience of a citizen who did not vote or approve of Gökçek, the AKP and Ankara City Gates. He/she lands at the airport, takes a shuttle to the city center, gets pulled over by the police to have his/her identification checked, goes on the road, sees the Airport Road City Gate, remembers the AKP, sees ornaments on the structures, remembers various ideological tropes related to the

AKP, leaves behind the city gates, then sees a signboard of a construction project to- be-built called “North Gate”, remembers the gate, remembers the AKP, remembers how the AKP and the construction sector is related in a neoliberal setting, arrives at the city center, goes home, stays at home until he/she travels to his/her office just outside the Eskişehir Road City Gate. Gates’ totalistic presence, the use of ideological spolia on the structures, and their initial function to draw boundaries all play into a certain kind of cultural citizenship that is reproduced in accordance to the ideological mélange of the AKP and the Turkish State. In this web of power

103 relations, the builder -the state- is at the top of the under-stander, because the under- stander -the citizen subject- does not have the option to avoid the city, and all its’ products in the public imagination. The under-stander enters a city whose boundaries are constantly drawn by the builder. The under-stander enters a city announced

Ottoman-Seljuk by the builder. The under-stander enters a city which was metaphorically appropriated by the builder. And this entrance is inevitable. In the end, the inevitability fuses with the spatio-metaphorical aspect of Ankara City Gates, and constantly “greet” citizens of Ankara into a cultural citizenship positioned under the AKP, and the Turkish State.

104

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