Output details

Picturing Modern Ankara: “New Turkey” in Western imagination

This output is based on research that examined an uncharted body of sources in order to establish how imagery produced by various authors and artists forged the symbolic place of Ankara in Western imagination; and how this, in turn, informed the cross-cultural perceptions of ‘New Turkey’ in the Republican period. It was developed thanks to a prestigious Early-Career Fellowship awarded by the AHRC in 2011-2012. The early stages of this research were presented to a seminar at SOAS in 2008 and at two international conferences, in Porto (10th International Conference of Utopian Studies Society/Europe, July 2009) and Guimarães (1st EAHN International Meeting, June 2010). The peer-reviewed journal article evolved further from papers presented to a research seminar at METU, Ankara (April 2012), and later at a specialist conference session in Prague (11th International Conference on Urban History, September 2012). A version of the paper was also presented at the symposium ‘The Making of Modern Ankara: Space, Politics, Representation’ (November 2012), which Deriu organised at the University of Westminster in collaboration with Professor Benjamin Fortna of SOAS. This international and interdisciplinary event contributed to reassess the rise and development of the Turkish capital within a wider and geo-political context.