Centenary Republic Day in Istanbul: Eventification of Urban Public Space during a National Day of Celebration

Abstract

Centenaries represent a significant milestone for nation-states as politically valuable occasions that permeate across public sphere(s), public realm(s), and public space(s). This dissertation examines the centenary of the Republic of Turkey in 2023 by investigating (1) the competing political visions about the state and the society; (2) the centenary’s representation in the mediascape; and (3) public space animation projects in Istanbul by two public institutions aligned with different political factions: the President’s Office and Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality. Using critical event studies and public value theory, this study first focuses on the discursive influences on the construction of the nation, the centenary Republic Day, and the publics at centenary-related events. To this end, it adopts a discourse-analytic approach using speeches from the leaders of main political factions in Turkey during the 2023 election period, and a frame analysis on writings about the centenary published in national newspapers by different media factions. It then examines how public space animation projects of the two public institutions materialized by focusing on the publicness of three animated urban spaces. Through a qualitative analysis of primary visual data, a descriptive account of the parameters of access, security, and design as they are conceived by public institutions and experienced by individuals is provided. While the centenary was commonly positioned as a nation-unifying phenomenon, this study demonstrates that the pre-existing and continuously evolving polarizing mechanisms in politics, media, and society were integral in the construction of the nation and the publics at the events. As such, public space animation projects took significantly different forms. The presidential project, on the one hand, was a spectacle of hard power that deployed recent achievements for passive consumption. On the other hand, the municipal project was a partially interactive celebratory event that positioned the centenary in its historical context. Furthermore, the presidential spectacle aimed to use existing urban amenities without any specific boundaries demarcating the public gathering from the everyday life of the city whereas the municipal event was mostly isolated from its surrounding areas with self-sustaining amenities. The municipal event offered higher flexibility to urban inhabitants’ interactions with the space although the space was less public on a conceived level in terms of its formal features like access and securitization. While publicness is often interpreted through physical spatial features, the experiences on the centenary underscore the decisive influence of symbolic and social features on perceived publicness.