Sculpting the nation in early republican Turkey

Abstract

Public monuments and statues of Ataturk, the founding father of the Turkish republic, are everywhere in modern Turkey. By the time Ataturk died in 1938, hundreds of busts, statues and monuments of him had already been erected in most important public spaces in Istanbul, Ankara and other major cities in Turkey. They exemplify one of the most effective instruments of the elite-driven projects of modernity by revealing the ways in which Ataturk and his political elites attempted to establish a new official public culture and official history. They have been instrumental in the formation and reproduction of Turkish nationalism since the beginning of the Turkish republic. If statuary is accepted in today's Turkey (marking a shift from the perception of figurative forms as something against the Islamic canon) the statues, monuments and busts of Ataturk have played a central role in this. However, they have also dominated open spaces in a way which has prevented city dwellers from constructing local identities through allegorical representations of the history of their cities.