From gardens to parks and back to nation's gardens: Ideological transformation of greenscapes in Turkey from 19th century to today

Public green spaces address social and urban needs and function as ideological landscapes. In the 19th century, as modern urban parks featuring greenscapes began to emerge in cities, Nation's Gardens were prominent examples within the Ottoman Empire. During the Early Republican period, modern public green spaces replaced Nation's Gardens in the cityscape and evolved into parks through planning. In 2018, the Nation's Gardens projects, which emerged as election promises, have become the new greenscapes of cities. These revivalist projects, which directly reference the Ottoman Nation's Gardens in their name, have programs pointing to Islamist parkscapes with its facilities, such as mosques and coffeehouses, even though Nation's Gardens were modern and even relatively secular. The thesis examines the anachronistic references and the exclusion of Early Republican parks to frame the ideological connections between the Ottoman Nation's Gardens, Republican parks, and recent Nation's Gardens and questions the ideological changes. The fact that public urban green spaces have been called parks since the 20th century, while today they are called gardens again, and the use of the concept of millet, which has undergone paradigm shifts from the Ottoman Empire to today, are also examined. According to the study, greenscape projects in Turkey have been used as ideological tools and have undergone constant changes in every period and government. The users, contents, and even the locations of these greenscapes have been frequently altered, and some have even been demolished to produce new ideological greenscapes.