Picturing Modern Ankara: 'New Turkey' in Western Imagination

安卡拉小镇转变为土耳其共和国首都是现代城市化历史上的一个非凡事件。在1923年宣布共和国成立后，安卡拉（安哥拉）成为穆斯塔法·凯末尔领导的国家建设项目的展示橱窗。几位欧洲规划师、建筑师和艺术家（包括Hermann Jansen、Clemens Holzmeister、Bruno Taut、Pietro Canonica等人）被雇佣来塑造一个体现统治精英西化愿景的现代城镇。到1938年atatatrk去世时，安卡拉已经牢固地确立了自己作为“土耳其心脏”的地位：也就是说，从奥斯曼帝国的废墟中崛起的世俗民族国家的地缘政治和象征中心。虽然土耳其首都的建设一直是众多历史记载的主题，但其文化表征尚未得到彻底调查。拟议的研究通过探索以下问题来解决这一历史知识上的差距：西方如何看待现代安卡拉的建设？它的城市形象如何影响欧洲人对“新土耳其”的看法？有大量证据表明，安卡拉的重建对西方的想象产生了强烈的影响。在20世纪20年代和30年代，许多旅行者被吸引到安纳托利亚草原上见证这个欧洲风格的小镇的崛起。在一个关键的历史关头，东方的地理空间正在被彻底重新配置，安卡拉为东西方之间的跨文化相遇提供了一个意想不到的地形。当君士坦丁堡的光环随着其帝国的首要地位而衰退时，安卡拉的魅力在于其独特的能力，即“世界上最古老和最新的”——正如一位著名的观察家当时所指出的那样。在此背景下，该研究旨在调查和分析一个未知的来源，记录欧洲对现代安卡拉的反应。这些已出版的资料包括格蕾丝·埃里森、乔治·萨瓦、约瑟·勒·布歇、克劳德·法罗尔特、科拉多·阿尔瓦罗、比亚吉奥·佩斯、斯蒂芬·罗纳特等人的作品。一套文化理论将被动员起来，以解开欲望、认可和“他者”之间复杂的相互作用，这些相互作用渗透在这些文献中。借鉴和发展对东方主义的批评话语，该研究将特别强调旅行写作作为一种流派，能够为旅行者自己的文化以及所代表的主题提供独特的见解。在这个框架内，“安卡拉之旅”的旅行叙述将通过批判和比较的方法进行研究，以揭示现代首都如何影响欧洲人对新土耳其的看法。对游记的分析将得到更广泛的资料来源的证实，如历史记载、传记、回忆录、旅游指南、报纸文章、建筑评论、采访和小说。这项研究将特别关注空间和建筑特征，这些特征有助于在西方想象中建立安卡拉的象征性场所。“东方”和“西方”之间的传统对立将通过讨论在不同作者、流派和文化中观察到的表现模式而成为问题。对这些文本的批判性解释也将辅以对视觉来源的研究，如电影、照片和绘画，这将成为未来展览的主题。由于其跨学科的性质，这项研究的目的是为今后可能适用于其他城市和文化背景的方法的发展提供个案研究。

The transformation of the small town of Ankara into the capital of the Turkish Republic is an extraordinary episode in the history of modern urbanism. After the proclamation of the Republic in 1923, Ankara (Angora) was turned into a showcase for the nation-building project led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Several European planners, architects, and artists (including Hermann Jansen, Clemens Holzmeister, Bruno Taut, Pietro Canonica, et al.) were employed to give shape to a modern town that would embody the westernising vision of the ruling elites. By the time of Atatürk's death, in 1938, Ankara had firmly established itself as the 'heart of Turkey': i.e., the geo-political and symbolic centre of the secular nation-state that had emerged from the debris of the Ottoman Empire. While the construction of the Turkish capital has been the subject of numerous historical accounts, however, its cultural representations have not been thoroughly investigated as yet.The proposed research addresses this gap in historical knowledge by exploring the following questions: How was the making of modern Ankara viewed from the West? And how did its urban imagery inform the European perception of 'New Turkey'? There is copious evidence to suggest that the rebuilding of Ankara exercised a strong hold on the Western imagination. During the 1920s and 1930s, a number of travellers were drawn to witness the rise of this European-looking town amidst the steppe of Anatolia. At a critical historical juncture, in which the geographic space of the Orient was being radically reconfigured, Ankara provided an unexpected terrain of cross-cultural encounters between East and West. While the aura of Constantinople decayed along with its imperial primacy, the allure of Ankara lay in its unique ability to encapsulate at once 'the oldest and the newest in the world' - as an eminent observer pointed out at the time. Against this background, the research aims to survey and analyse an uncharted body of sources documenting the European responses to the making of modern Ankara. These published sources include, among others, works by Grace Ellison, George Sava, José Le Boucher, Claude Farrère, Corrado Alvaro, Biagio Pace, Stephan Ronart, et al. A set of cultural theories will be mobilised in order to unpack the complex interplay between desire, recognition, and 'othering' that permeates this literature. Drawing on and developing the critical discourse on Orientalism, the research will pay particular emphasis to travel writing as a genre that is able to offer unique insights into the traveller's own culture as well as that of the subjects represented. Within this framework, travel narratives of the 'journey to Ankara' are going to be examined through a critical and comparative approach, in a bid to uncover how the modern capital inflected the European perceptions of New Turkey.The analysis of travelogues will be corroborated by a wider range of sources such as historical accounts, biographies, memoires, tourist guidebooks, newspaper articles, architectural reviews, interviews, and novels. This study will focus in particular on the spatial and architectural features that contributed to establish the symbolic place of Ankara in Western imagination. Conventional oppositions between 'East' and 'West' will be problematised through the discussion of the patterns of representation that can be observed across various authors, genres, and cultures. The critical interpretation of these texts will also be complemented by the study of visual sources such as film, photographs, and drawings, which will make the subject of a prospective exhibition. Owing to its interdisciplinary nature, the research is intended to provide a case study for the development of a methodology that might potentially become applicable to other urban and cultural contexts in the future.