AKP's Ankara municipality plans to narrow the land of Atatürk's mausoleum

Ankara Metropolitan Municipality, ruled by Melih Gökçek from the Justice and Development Party (AKP), projects a master plan to narrow the land of Atatürk's mausoleum for new construction zones. The municipality's move leads to harsh debates since it is considered an ideological attack on Republican monuments
Wednesday, 26 July 2017 04:00

Ruled by Melih Gökçek, an infamous mayor from the Justice and Development Party (AKP), Ankara Metropolitan Municipality projects to implement a master plan in the city for the year of 2023 that will mark the centenary of the modern Republic of Turkey.

Turkey’s Chamber of Architects in Ankara analysed the projected master plan, according to which, the land mausoleum (Anıtkabir) of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey, is to be narrowed on a broad scale.

The chamber indicates that the master plan of the municipality projects to eliminate the sportive and recreational parts around Atatürk’s mausoleum, zoning a hundred thousand square meters of land for housing construction and parking space.

IDEOLOGICAL AND REVANCHIST ATTACKS ON REPUBLICAN MONUMENTS

“There is nothing to advocate on the plan. The plan is a part of ideological decisions,” said Tezcan Karakuş Candan, the chairperson of the Chambers of Architects Ankara branch, referring to the Justice and Development Party’s stance against the Republican monuments.

Candan continued: “The move to destroy the past since the year of 2006 has recently reached Anıtkabir. Indeed, all the destructed buildings became a part of the process against Anıtkabir. We cannot see anything technical while reading this plan. Contrarily, we witness it as a part of their ideological perspective. In 2012, we said that the ‘Illegal Palace’ [referring to Erdoğan’s Presidential Palace] was not only a change of plan but also a spatial expression of a revanchist regime that directly targeted the regime of Republic. This process is ideological, and settling scores with the regime.”

Meanwhile, Ankara’s mayor Melih Gökçek, famous for his misleading statements on Twitter, applied to a prosecution office on the grounds that “the Chamber of Architects provoked citizens with its unreal statements regarding the master plan of Anıtkabir”.