Sibel Bozdogan. Modernism and Nation Building: Turkish Architectural Culture in the Early Republic. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001.

Abstract

Few, if any, countries in modern history have been as willing as Turkey to adopt Western forms and life-styles without external colonial force. Beginning in the final days of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the nineteenth century, and continuing with increasing intensity during the early decades of the Turkish Republic, local elites were committed to importing Western modernity while nationalizing it. In Modernism and Nation Building, Sibel Bozdogan traces the active role played by state-employed Ottoman and Turkish architects in this process as they literally “built the nation.” By bringing together rich historical and archival resources—from architectural styles of buildings to curricula of architecture schools, and from ceremonial building competitions to popular magazines—the author presents an innovative approach to the social, cultural, and political relevance of architecture, especially in a non-postcolonial nationalist project.