One building, several facades: political showcasing in contemporary Turkey

Fuente: Zenodo
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Autore principale: Zık, M. Ragıp
Natura: Recurso digital
Pubblicazione: Zenodo 2018
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author Zık, M. Ragıp
author_facet Zık, M. Ragıp
contents <p>This essay uses the Atatürk Cultural Center (AKM) in Istanbul's Taksim Square as a lens through which to examine Turkey's shifting political landscape. The author traces how the building's facade — a prominent public surface at the heart of the city — became a site of successive political appropriation: first as a symbol of Kemalist secular modernity, then as a canvas for the diverse, pluralist imagery of the 2013 Gezi Park protests, and finally as a vehicle for pro-Erdoğan religious nationalist messaging following the 2016 coup attempt. The demolition of the AKM in 2018 is read not merely as an architectural loss, but as a deliberate erasure of a secular republican legacy and a consolidation of a new political cult built around Erdoğan's persona. The article argues that the successive "facades" displayed on the building mirror the deeper ideological contests — between secularism and religious nationalism, between grassroots pluralism and authoritarian populism — that have defined contemporary Turkish politics.</p>
format Recurso digital
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publishDate 2018
publisher Zenodo
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spellingShingle One building, several facades: political showcasing in contemporary Turkey
Zık, M. Ragıp
<p>This essay uses the Atatürk Cultural Center (AKM) in Istanbul's Taksim Square as a lens through which to examine Turkey's shifting political landscape. The author traces how the building's facade — a prominent public surface at the heart of the city — became a site of successive political appropriation: first as a symbol of Kemalist secular modernity, then as a canvas for the diverse, pluralist imagery of the 2013 Gezi Park protests, and finally as a vehicle for pro-Erdoğan religious nationalist messaging following the 2016 coup attempt. The demolition of the AKM in 2018 is read not merely as an architectural loss, but as a deliberate erasure of a secular republican legacy and a consolidation of a new political cult built around Erdoğan's persona. The article argues that the successive "facades" displayed on the building mirror the deeper ideological contests — between secularism and religious nationalism, between grassroots pluralism and authoritarian populism — that have defined contemporary Turkish politics.</p>
title One building, several facades: political showcasing in contemporary Turkey
url https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18841424