Confrontation of Traditional and Modern: Case Studies on Republican City Karabük and Traditional Ottoman Town Safranbolu in Turkey

Introduction

Scholars of the republican period acknowledge its ideological impact which is modern on urban life and the spatial organization of Turkey in the decades that followed its founding in 1923. Raft of policies were drafted to support the drive for modernization including the declaration of Ankara as the new nation’s capital. New infrastructure was commissioned, including a re-organization of the railway network with Ankara as the center. Plans to industrialize the economy were then drafted in line with this vision for Anatolia (Tekeli, 1998, pp. 1-24). The political imperatives of the time were to secure independent sources of energy and materials, principally iron and coal that could readily supply strategic industries such as steel manufacturing. Soon new cities and workplaces would arise, as in Karabük in the 1930s where centrally planned investments in technology and expertise provided an opportunity to showcase new lifestyles and idealizations for modern cities.

Native and foreign architects began collaborating to create a signature spatial identity, one that would both embody the ideals of the state and establish a trend for modern living spaces. They worked to introduce a new structural culture with stylistic preferences that were distinct from the traditional vernacular. In this context, Karabük, a new centre created by government decree that became a focus of efforts to showcase investments in the iron and steel industry, serves as a useful case study for the modern urban and architectural arguments of Turkey. The ties with traditional architecture have begun to change sharply as can be observed in the cities of Safranbolu and Karabük, which are neighbours to each other. In the early part of the 20th century Safranbolu retained a strong reflection of the Ottoman period, both in its housing fabric and city formation. Homes provide examples of secrecy in architecture. While neighbors do not prevent each other seeing into their site and each building could benefit from the view of the site, the layout of the homes and the latticework placed in front of windows served to maintain the privacy of family life, particularly that of the women of the household. Narrow streets and architectural timber material are also regional aspects that were signature to the architecture of Safranbolu. The Republic project Karabük on the other hand gives examples that reveal the modernist spatial formation of the Early Republican Period. It’s contemporary appearance includes social infrastructure located at the intersections of its right-angled streets and modern architectural examples. The public space model of the Republic in Karabük responds to a deliberate projection of the rational, secular, holistic and state-centered modernization approach. Social focal points in Karabük orient women and men to socialize in the same place, they support a modern lifestyle by creating a kind of obstacle for provincialization (Arıtan 2008, pp.48-56). The city is constructed in a hierarchical manner, presents the strict structuring of modernism, and an obvious example of social stratification.

The decision to establish Karabük nearby was greeted with great excitement by the population of Safranbolu who had already experienced great hardships and witnessed the degeneration of their community and were looking for economic revival. Unfortunately, the unprecedented economic and cultural activity that accompanied the establishment of Karabük in the 1930s did not spill over to benefit Safranbolu. A massive influx of workers to the new city radically increased the regional population and sharpened the old-new, modern-traditional contrasts between the two settlements, and fed cultural dilemmas over the traditional role of Safranbolu as the regional centre. These dilemmas are clearly expressed in how the residents of each sought to retain and project their values in the spatial aspects of their settlements. This social and economic aspects of Karabük and Safranbolu are noticeably nourished by political and social sentiments that resisted integration with each other and that are in turn reflected in an architectural and urban scale.

This paper sets out a number of reasons for the conflict between center- provincial arguments and concludes that the urban experience of Safranbolu relative to Karabük, and the central-provincial dilemma reflects modern and traditional encounter which could be acknowledged as a manifestation of a political, social and urban disappointment to accommodate the needs of a traditional regional centre in the early 20^th century.