Confessions of Monuments: Commemorating and Representing the Turkish Nation-State in the Early Twentieth Century

Following the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in the early 1920s, an emerging nation state built a particular relationship with the Ottoman past. In its simultaneous disavowal and inheritance of it, this was the new Republic of Turkey, founded in 1923. Nation-states are areas of ideological contestation. However, they are equally visible and tangible. This is thanks to the making of a new world of artefacts in build or print that represent and commemorate them in many, often contradicting ways through design practices. This book offers a thorough account of this new Turkish material world through the trajectories of commemoration; from public monuments, print media, and festive illumination to temporary and permanent architecture from the onset of the 1908 Young Turk revolution to the demise of Turkey's founding single-party regime in the late 1950s. If objects are silent actors of history, their confessions await.

Author: Emin Artun Ozguner
Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Published: 06/23/2026
Series: Studies in Design and Material Culture
Pages: 248
Weight: 1.5lbs
Size: 9.40h x 6.70w x 0.80d
ISBN: 9781526176233