The transforming and the building sites of memory in early republican period: The cases of Dolmabahçe palace and Anitkabir

There are many attempts to solve the connection between memory, national identity and architecture. Pierre Nora's sites of memory is one of these endeavors. The term implies that there are certain places, objects, monuments that created/recreated to animate and maintain national identity of a given society. These are called sites of memory. These sites of memory are effective in building and consolidating a national identity because they serve as effective circuits of collective memory of given society. In this thesis, I choose to focus on the ways these sites are appeared/created in the early Republican period to reveal and analyze the process makes Dolmabahçe Palace and Anıtkabir powerful sites of memory from the early republican period to these days. Dolmabahçe Palace and Anıtkabir are analyzed as the cases of transforming/building the sites of memory in the early Republican Period. The case of Dolmabahçe Palace indicates the ways the Republic reshaped the Palace with physical and symbolic interventions and transforms it into a site of memory of the Republic. The detailed description of the Palace Complex is provided to prove the level of interventions. The physical intervention is also documented and analyzed in its historical and political context. The case of Anıtkabir shows how the Republic designs a monument from the scratch as a site of memory. Since Anıtkabir is an expression of contemporary architectural agendas in early Republican Turkey as well as political one, relative debates about the national architecture are discussed. The processes of selection of the project and the place of Anıtkabir are also discussed. To achieve these goals, the archive documents from Başbakanlık Cumhuriyet Arşivleri (Republican Archives of Prime Ministry), master plans (Henri Prost's plan), architecture magazine (Arkitekt) are studied as well as relevant literature. The analysis of Dolmabahçe Palace and Anıtkabir as sites of memory -- regarding the representations of and the memory usage of Turkish modernity in early republican period- has demonstrated the vision of early Republican Turkey on national identity and the ideal past of the Turkish nation. Also the analysis has indicated the ways nation-state intervene or create the sites of memory by sponsoring urbanistic and architectural projects. Thus, the thesis, I hope, makes small but meaningful contribution to memory studies on early Republican period. Key Words: Dolmabahçe Palace, Anıtkabir, sites of memory, Early Republican Period architecture, national identity, collective memory