The Republic was selective in the making of its national history. It rejected its Ottoman past, and concentrated on the previous eras of the Ottoman state. In terms of territory, the previous cultures which lived in Anatolia became of primary importance in the textbooks. Lowenthal affirms that “Turkish schoolchildren learn that civilisation originated on the Anatolian plateau.
Like the attitude to the making of official national history, the preference for the urban features of previous cultures in Istanbul became significant. Whereas pre-republican Turkish society lacked public open spaces within the Islamic city pattern and culture, where religious complexes dominated by men were the social centres of oriental society, in Greco-Roman civilisations public open spaces had had a specific importance. In this respect, the master plan emphasised the preservation of architectural and urban heritage, especially those from the pre-Ottoman era.
Aware from classical texts and Sitte's writings of the spatial arrangement of the Greco- Roman era of Europe, and of the significance of the forum, or agora in Greco-Roman culture, where public social and political life had taken place, Prost recommended
espaces libres, as monumental squares within his plan for Istanbul. He knew very well the Islamic spatial organisation of the city without public arenas from his former visit at the beginning of the century. Moreover, Istanbul, itself, presented visual clues of the pre-Ottoman spatial pattern to the designer. And one of the ways of re-inventing
espaces libres within a culture of. that kind was to emphasise its Greco-Roman origins, where public open space had mattered. In place of the Ottoman urban structure lacking public space, the Ancient Roman one offered a model more welcomed to the aims of the new republic, in Prost’s words, “a new image of the country.”^®®
Apart from the conservation issue of the mainly Greco-Roman heritage, the sense of public open space had a political significance that is again very important for the spatial arrangement of the city. In this case, Tony Garnier’s Cité Industrielle gave a broad reference of a democratic city, and the treatment of the public open space to the designer. At the Villa Medici (during the same years with Prost), Gamier worked on an
imaginative and equally unprecedented reconstruction of the Roman hill city of
Tusculum. This project and the first version of the Cité industrielle were jointly exhibited in Paris in 1904 (though not published till 1917). As Frampton writes, “this was about a city with an urban organisation that anticipated in its separate zoning, without walls and private property, where all the unbuilt surface was public parks.”^®® Moreover,
David Lowenthal, The Pastis a Foreign Country. New York; Cambridge University Press, (1985) 1993:332. 298 Prost, note 3.
Jaussely’s (Prix de Rome entry of 1903) A Metropolitan Square in a Large Democratic State resembled in many respects “the layout, content and ethos of the cultural and administrative centre of Garnier’s Cité", which was rendered as a space of public appearance, and which “remained above all else the vision of a Mediterranean socialist arcadia.”^°°
What happened in Turkey was not quite the same, but nonetheless Prost, familiar from his time at the Villa Medici with the idea that a certain kind of public space could be part of the political reform, projected wide boulevards and espaces libres for Istanbul with a manifestly political significance. Prost wrote:
“I force myself to preserve the most characteristic of the Roman and Byzantine
• , .,301
C ivilisations.
In the Turkish context, Prost first recommended the total conservation of the antique and Byzantine core, mainly situated in the east of the historical peninsula, converting it into an archaeological zone, as an open air museum, where he conceptualised a dynamic public life with “a splendide promenade” and “a square for the national c e l e b r a t i o n s . T h u s , he specified a wider square at At Meydani (the Roman hippodrome area, close to Hagia Sophia), with a “splendid panoramic sea view.” He suggested that this would be the "true Republican square, for the future celebrations of national days.”^°^ In this project, Prost gave Hagia Sophia as an example of
secularisation. He affirmed: “Hagia Sophia belonged to humanity, the Turkish Republic separated this from r e l i g i o n .C o m b i n e d with the decision of state conversion of Hagia Sophia from mosque into museum (it was converted into a mosque following the conquest of the city), it was a major step into both nationalisation and secularisation of the whole religious area. Although the archaeological park project was not completely executed as Prost intended, the monuments and the principal sites of the area were well preserved.
Prost designed a wide esplanade under Hagia Sophia, where women and men might go out together to contemplate the unique view. "Sarayburnu and the surrounding buildings merited the same approach” of being re-designed for a mixed and secular society^®® like Hagia Sophia, for which he proposed for the inhabitants a wide esplanade, shadowed by trees like the one in Nice, and a sea-front boulevard that, in
300 Frampton, 100-104.
301 Prost, letter to Hautecœur, 07.10.1943. 302 Prost, note 15.
303 Prost, note 15. 304 Prost, note 15.
305 Prost did not use the word secular in his report However in his lectures both in Istanbul and Paris, he described the new mixed society, emphasising the equality of women and men; Prost, report, 7.
his w ords, "will be the most beautiful one in the w orld for m e.”^°® He added that “if this is rejected, than the area between Sarayburnu and the G alata Bridge should have an esplanade like those in Algiers and A n v e r s o r “like La Promenade des Anglais at the bay o f des A nges in Nice.”^°® Thus, Prost was deliberately associating these spaces w ith ones in Europe (FIG .3.10, 11).
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