As a historiyographic problematic: 'Turkish house' (1928-1995)

In this thesis, we analyzed the structure of a group of texts written roughly between 1930 and 1990 starting from the earliest vernacular housing text. On texts selected, we, first of all, discussed reasons underlying the familiar architectural discourse called ?Turkish House?. Turkish architecture created buildings in parallel to political atmospheres and ideologies prevailing in the country, from the Ottoman Period of Reforms up to 1950s. In 1928 ? 1950 period, during which ?Turkish House? texts started to appear, a ?national? category called ?Turkish House? took shape in a process taking its roots from Early Republican Turkey. And in texts written after 1960s, construction of ?Turkish House? concept has matured to such an extent that nobody had doubted of existence of ?Turkish House? any more.During the course of thesis-oriented research, we observed that demands for ?change/ transformation? identified with ?Westernization/modernization? concepts have given birth to a ?dilemma of identity? in architecture. This study gives some cues about the extent of difficulty this quandary poses for history-writing.We tried to provide different perspectives to such issues as where have the intellectuals of the period looked for nationalism or as how has ?vernacular? architecture been positioned within the Republic.Keywords: Sedad Hakkı Eldem, national architecture seminar, nationalism, Turkish history thesis, Turkish art, historization of architecture in Turkey, patriotism, locality, vernaculer, folk architecture, traditional building method, Turkish house plan types, Turkish room, sofa/hayat/hall.