Draining an Anatolian desert: overcoming water,wetlands,and malaria in early republican Ankara

The state of studying early Ankara and the republic

In assessing the available scholarship on Ankara for this period, both in urban and other histories and in geography, it is useful to note existing limitations and how I propose to move beyond them. First, as already mentioned, the question of nature has been largely overlooked, with research having focused instead on the built and human (as contrasted with the natural or physical) landscape. To overcome this deficit, I consider how the physical landscape (or ‘nature’) was perceived and represented, especially with regard to public health. A second shortcoming arises in Bülent Batuman’s recent examination of the ‘urban historiography’ of ‘early republican Ankara’ – what I phrase more properly as a critical analysis of the varied symbolisms or framings of the city. His analysis offers insight into two standard ways in which the early capital has been depicted by scholars and other writers. On the one hand, the city has been portrayed with a measure of nostalgia, constituting a geographic focal point in nationalist histories of an idyllic past – and place – of unity. On the other hand, scholarly traditions in urban and architectural studies in the 1990s and subsequently prioritized a critique of modernism and hence rendered – ironically, given its postmodern foundations – narrowly established conventions for depicting the city’s past. Also described as somewhat ‘nostalgic’ by Batuman, these recent ways of framing the city commonly speak more to contemporary sociopolitical concerns and sensibilities than to early republican issues and experiences. ⁷ Though I maintain a high regard for the critiques of modernism that emerged in Turkish scholarship in the 1990s and after, I submit that this article’s incorporation of issues associated both with constructions of nature and with matters of public health provides for the topical evolution of such studies – both beyond the styles and forms of modernist cities and buildings and apart from the sociopolitical anxieties of the 1990s. Third, an additional limitation of existing scholarship on urban and related histories of the early republic is that of historiographic significance. Though a growing number of scholarly publications are identified by their authors as focused on the ‘early republic’ – as observed by Batuman, ⁸ I contend that a perusal of the bibliographies of most works reveals severe historiographic shortcomings. Though many include an abundance of secondary sources (both on Turkey and from the theoretical literature), their primary sources tend to date no earlier than the 1930s. ⁹ Many studies that do cite materials from the early 1930s largely limit their presentation and analysis to graphic imagery, and any associated textual content is generally omitted from consideration. ¹⁰

These tendencies to prioritize later and visual sources in the scholarship on the early republic stem from at least three causes. First, among those who since the 1990s have made the greatest contribution to histories of the early republic, we find many historians of art, architecture, and city and regional planning. Until recently, it has been less common for historians to examine this period of transition – with many Ottomanist scholars stopping their work with the demise of the Young Turk state and with many historians of the republic not commencing their work until the 1930s or later. ¹¹ A second cause, associated with the first, is that there is a vast primary literature from the early republican period that has yet to be dealt with, most of it in Ottoman Turkish. ¹² While key documents of executive and legislative branches of the state and particular works of literature have been transcribed and translated from the Ottoman Turkish employed from the founding of the republic into the early 1930s, many categories of vital historical texts remain neglected. ¹³ A third cause, also derivative from the first, is that the focus of most current sources has been on traditions of urban design, planning, and architecture. By contrast, other governmental interests and ministries – such as the Ministries of Health and Social Assistance, of Public Works, and of the Interior – have been relatively overlooked. This prioritizing of planning over other spheres of governance, I argue, overstates both the central administrative nature of the Kemalist state and the roles played by foreigners. If we consider the existing scholarship on the histories and geographies of other modernist states contemporary with the republic, these combined oversights in scope and sources seem almost unfathomable. ¹⁴

Speaking to tendencies to overstate the role of the early Turkish state and its leader, the following observation by one political scientist is germane:

For Turkey’s intellectuals, Atatürk has been like an elephant sitting in the living room. Whether one likes the elephant or not, it is very difficult for others in the room to see around it or, for that matter, to speak about anything else. More than half a century after his death, Atatürk has continued to set the agenda, provoking ongoing veneration, along with a sometimes vituperative opposition. ¹⁵

As for the sway of non-Turkish pressures, because so much of the input in planning and architecture was solicited from and submitted by foreign parties, the influence of foreigners – both invited and unwanted – in the early republic has been deemed considerable. Indeed, such influences ranged widely, from Carl Christoph Lörcher’s and Hermann Jansen’s distinctive plans for the city itself to the presumed ‘foreign intrigues that Ankara’ reportedly perceived around every corner, as depicted in New York Times foreign correspondent Anne O’Hare McCormick’s Orientalist account of the new capital. ¹⁶ The conventional wisdoms that emerged from these generalizations have induced Turkish citizens and scholars of the republic alike to presume that any and all policy directives emerged either from Atatürk himself or from foreign examples that were copied eagerly or compelled from above or beyond the state.

Though such presumptions may complement the republic’s own historical narratives, which suppose a tradition independent from the empire, they cannot diminish the profound continuities between Ottoman and republican states and societies. For many years, historians have pointed to such continuities, ¹⁷ and historical geographers have recently contributed to this theme as well. ¹⁸ Nonetheless, the shadow of the so-called elephant – and that of his foreign friends – remains in the room. This seems especially apparent in the surprisingly ahistorical presentation of the early republic’s major monuments and modernist projects. Though seminal for the past decade’s scholarship on Turkish nationalism and urbanism, Bozdoğan’s Modernism and Nation Building evidences this shortcoming. She identifies and analyzes projects with regard to their constructions, forms, styles, and legacies, but in almost all instances, a history of the ideas behind such initiatives (i.e. preceding the republic) is omitted. Though Ankara’s nearby Çubuk Dam as a source of potable water is addressed, ¹⁹ there is no mention of late-19th-century Ottomanist notions of ambitious water projects for settlements and irrigation that included the Anatolian southeast – presaging the eventual republic’s Atatürk Dam and broader GAP initiative (i.e. the Güneydoğu Anadolu Projesi, or Southeastern Anatolia Project). ²⁰ While Ankara’s forest farm (i.e. Atatürk Orman Çiftliği) is discussed, ²¹ a similar project initiated in the Hamidian era in the Ottoman capital of Istanbul is neglected. ²² Likewise, the book addresses republican projects to ‘colonize the countryside’ and to ‘educate the nation’ with schools (among other means), presenting the smartly drawn architectural plans for village schools, ²³ yet late Ottomanist initiatives to construct ‘modern’ schools throughout the villages, towns, and cities of the empire’s frontiers (complete with their own specifications for appropriate buildings) that were strikingly similar ²⁴ are never acknowledged. Though a detailed history of architectural forms and styles, visual images, and identities and ideologies associated with development projects may be insightful, it remains incomplete so long as the histories of ideas and processes preceding such projects remain unacknowledged and unexamined. Moreover, this omission in analysis inadvertently restates the very statist narratives that such studies claim to scrutinize. ²⁵

An ahistorical and largely visual approach to the republic of the 1920s does little to advance our appreciation for the measure of conviction that leaders and many citizens felt about the state and in its progressive course. Much to her credit, this is a point that Bozdoğan emphasizes strongly. ²⁶ As a consequence, we are left to minimize the very real limitations on both materials and capacities that were experienced by the early republic, and to judge the ambitions of modernity projects in terms of their incompleteness, irrelevance, or insincerity. To recall again Migdal’s reflections on this experience:

Ankara never quite became all that its modern planners hoped it would be. Its bright new buildings and planned streets resembled a Hollywood set, at first glance representing depth and a total community but on closer inspection becoming just a façade with little behind its placard fronts. ²⁷

Though Migdal notes that this project was exclusionary, he also concludes that those marginalized ‘had a say in what Ankara was to become and thereby shaped the project of modernity as it shaped them.’ In the years since he wrote his conclusion to Bozdoğan and Kasaba’s edited volume, one’s hope that we might interrogate meaningfully the experiences of those who built up or were barred by such ‘placards’ remains largely a goal that has yet to be realized in scholarship on the early capital city. ²⁸

Indeed, in formulating a more meaningful research agenda for the historical geographies of the early republic, there is an imperative to expand the scope and depth of our inquiries. If we do so, ideas and actors may be found within the space of the state and its constituent administrative strata that are otherwise obscured by a focus on the elephant, his friends, and shadows. Conversely, other voices may be found beyond the state – existing as excluded or oppositional actors whose ‘hidden transcripts’ still await identification and analysis. ²⁹ As I progress in this study, I initiate an analysis of an otherwise overlooked theme in studies of the early republic: nature. Additionally, I draw upon sources that are in both Ottoman and modern Turkish, and I supplement these with English-language primary accounts (from the elephant’s presumed friends) as markers of contrast and comparison. Finally, my analysis moves beyond the central state and its more monumental expressions in the landscape to explore the voices and actions of many of its functionaries in the 1920s as they sought to redefine the circumstances and spaces of the Turkish nation.

From marshes to microbes: approaching early republican constructs of nature

Integral to this study is an assessment of how Anatolia’s natural landscapes were construed and constructed by both Turks and foreigners in the early republic. ³⁰ As noted, many visiting Europeans and Americans tended to depict the site of the emergent capital in singular and bleak ways – emphasizing its remoteness and aridity. Writing in 1923, one New York Times correspondent (identified only as C.P.) speculated that the city was far too desolate to have any geopolitical permanence in the emerging republic: ‘It is improbable, however, that Angora is the permanent capital, although it will doubtless remain the capital until peace is concluded.’ ³¹ As the correspondent McCormick described it in the following year, ‘Angora is more than twenty-six hours of uncomfortable travel away from Constantinople. It is on another continent, in a separate world, and it has nothing to contemplate across the sterile plains whereon it broods but the distorted shadows of events and the monstrous image of the abdicated capital, unwieldy, alien, swarming with plots.’ ³²

The predicament of water, however, was not just a matter of passing description but the primary focus of another New York Times article titled ‘Kemal Had Vision in Building Angora.’ Authored by Ernest Marshall in 1926, the subheads to the article read ‘But Turkish Engineers, Halted by Funds, Fail to Get Water to New Capital’ and ‘City Rebuilt in Desert.’ Approaching Ankara by train from Istanbul, the correspondent writes, visitors will witness not ‘the magic beauty of the Bosporus and Marmora’ but instead ‘a country which is removed from being a desert only by the fact that here and there it is under cultivation – the sort of cultivation that man was capable of giving to the land a thousand years ago.’ The primitive nature of habitation within this ‘barren’ landscape is stressed further with descriptions of ‘ox-drawn, primeval plows’ and the absolute lack of ‘modern agricultural machinery, and nitrates, natural or synthetic.’ Drawing even closer to the new capital, however, he relates the ‘astonishing’ efforts being taken to erect the nation’s forward capital and to make this desert bloom. Surveying foreign assessments of these efforts, both optimistic and less so, he quotes one foreigner who expresses his confidence in Atatürk along with a pessimistic view of the environmental challenges at hand: ‘But he is engaged in a struggle against nature.’ Adding to this assessment, Marshall notes that dust is ‘in some respects the most characteristic feature of Angora,’ but he also notes the problem of mud. He concludes by offering his best wishes to the new capital and to the ‘New Turkey.’ ³³ Though Marshall’s mention of mud was one of the rare comments from foreigners that contrasts with the standard images of aridity (not an infrequent complaint among them), foreigners’ health-related concerns associated with water were also sometimes at play – including reservations about its cleanliness and availability and the spread of malaria. ³⁴ Reflecting upon the 1920s city a decade later, Harold Denny recalled the challenges posed by the ‘malarial swamp when Kemal Ataturk made Ankara the capital.’ ³⁵

Turks also wrote of the remote location and aridity of Anatolia when describing Ankara. Depicting the rustic nature of the Anatolian interior, a Turkish journalist recalled that the seemingly barren nature of the new capital could be overlooked when one considered what was at stake for the nation and what was transpiring in history:

Ankara was a most cheerful roost after the dark and bitter armistice days. It is true that there were no hotels, no electric lights, and no conveniences. You had to carry your own bed and find a space for it in the house of a friend. When it was your turn to get a bite to eat in the only restaurant, called ‘Anadolu’ (the Turkish name for Anatolia), you certainly were not carried away by gastronomic delight. Still, you were happy; you did not highly prize physical values. You had a sense of possessing, all of a sudden, a great many satisfactions and dreams, and much else which had been beyond even the horizons of your dreams. Paradise could not be any different or better.

Here, in a little peasant town, a new world was dawning . . . ³⁶

Under such circumstances, Anatolia’s natural environment was viewed as an obstacle to overcome, but this same context was at the time, and has been since, depicted as promoting a critical process: nation-building. Both echoing and critically assessing the early republic, Turkish author Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu relates such sentiments about the emergent nation and its rustic capital in his classic novel Ankara. Portraying both the life of the capital and the country, Karaosmanoğlu employs the voice of a young journalist named Neşet Sabit Bey to symbolize Ankara as a forge for the Turkish nation:

For us, Ankara became our unrivalled school of ‘energy.’ Steep, rugged, and arduous Ankara, where we were denied any kind of comfort, suffered, and faced hardship, Ankara teaches us to be patient and to struggle day and night against all odds that are obstacles to our progress; like a hard anvil, it continuously tempers our will. As Nietzsche said, ‘we live here amid constant heroism and danger.’ Can there be a more beautiful life than this? What part of the world could be more invigorating than this place? ³⁷

Beyond serving as simply a site of inspiration, however, Ankara of the early 1920s was also a place of contrast for the nationalists. Whereas the strong and loyal view the capital as a wellspring for their cause and convictions, Neşet Sabit Bey points out that others with questionable character and commitment appear to perceive the site with scorn. For those who were fickle or disloyal, Ankara was contrasted disparagingly with Istanbul and criticized for its dust, mud, and mosquito-ridden summers. For decades afterwards, strong associations in nationalistic discourse bound Ankara with the loyal and worthy of the Turkish people – with Istanbul enduring simultaneously as a suspect Other in the national narrative.

While foreign visitors to Ankara tended to focus upon the city’s challenges of aridity (with some aforementioned exceptions), ³⁸ Turkish citizens – both optimistic and otherwise – tended to emphasize an excess of water as much as its scarcity. Such images went far beyond the inconvenience of encountering excessive mud amid one’s trips throughout the city. These depictions related the problems that most Turkish people associated with Anatolia’s wetlands: mosquitoes and malaria.

Given this 1920s view of Ankara as a city with nearby wetlands, establishing the republic’s capital presented particular challenges for state leaders and citizens alike, and these challenges must be viewed in terms of how people in Turkey had come to view nature. At this point in history, undertaking this forward capital project was not simply a matter of overcoming nature in the traditional sense. For past generations in Turkey and in comparable experiences elsewhere, such expressions of nation-over-nature tended to involve a clearing of forests and a sowing of seeds to induce nature to flourish in a ‘proper’ or ‘civilized’ fashion; instances of a young (or reinvigorated) nation living up to its potential as it confronted its frontiers; or some combination of both. ³⁹ To be sure, each of these dimensions of overcoming nature was at play in Ankara – and they were readily symbolized as such at the time of the city’s de facto adoption as a nationalist capital, when it was declared officially as such, and ever since. ⁴⁰ I contend, however, that by the early 1920s, medical professionals in the West and in Anatolia understood malaria well enough both as a parasitic disease and as a vector-borne problem. Moreover, they were aware of the vector’s (i.e. the mosquito’s) life cycle and what habitats were most conducive to its proliferation (i.e. wetlands). As these and other scientific facts entered into wider public knowledge through much of the world, people’s understandings of nature changed substantially – as did the expectations that many citizens throughout the world had regarding their nation-states. ⁴¹ In such settings, therefore, the science of medicine and the pursuit of public health informed in increasingly complex ways what many architects and engineers were keen to regard as their ‘science’ of planning and design. ⁴²

In this context of promoting both the lessons and the promises of modern medical science, water, wetland, and contagion came to play significant roles – shaping perceptions, inclinations, legislation, and constructions of the built environment. ⁴³ Health and associated risks were linked through policymaking and science both with nature and with planning, and public health priorities and policies were part and parcel of the politics of urban design and administration – especially in the decades preceding the development and diffusion of DDT. Moreover, projects of both planning and public health constituted a crucial means for connecting the governing state with its local populations. ⁴⁴ Focusing on Ankara’s initial confrontation of malaria in the early republic, we thus witness the ways that municipal and national policies coincided, and we discern how views of malaria in the 1920s as a natural threat facilitated these connections.

Malaria as Ankara’s ‘natural’ adversary

As awareness of the etiology and epidemiology of malaria spread beyond Turkey’s medical community, water was increasingly regarded as a source not only of life but also of death. Emerging as a focal point in public health as much as in planning, the environment (and especially water) thus was ascribed with significance not merely ecological and aesthetic but also political. The nascent republic endeavored to disseminate these associations even more broadly via propaganda developed for the general public that connected malaria both with mosquitoes and with wetlands. ⁴⁵ As Turkey’s intended capital, Ankara thus was prioritized not only as a place to symbolize the new nationalist republic but also as a site for overcoming one of its foremost, waterborne foes: malaria. ⁴⁶

This centrality of Ankara in the early republic’s political and public health campaigns against malaria was not unique; the emergent capital functioned as a site for pilot projects and as a focal point for other statist initiatives ⁴⁷ much as Istanbul did for the empire that preceded the nation-state. Distinct from the outcome of other public health initiatives, however, were the ways in which the city’s surrounding environments – both natural and man-made – came to be viewed as threats to the populace. Because malaria was rooted in forms of nature that ranged from wetlands to man-made rice fields, as opposed to diseases that were linked with social conditions, human activity, or standards of morality, the state’s mandate for confronting malaria was far broader than for other diseases. While other public health laws were limited largely to the bodies and behaviors of the state’s populace, subjecting citizens to surveillance and even to invasive examinations, ⁴⁸ the laws addressing malaria confronted a wide range of human and physical landscapes throughout Anatolia. In this context, the republic unambiguously identified wetlands, whether natural or man-made, as potential enemies of the state. ⁴⁹ As noted, this approach constituted a major thrust in the state’s lessons in public health (see Figure 1), and drainage/reclamation projects and legislation proscribing particular places and practices associated with rice cultivation – among other measures – thus followed.

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Figure 1.

In one of the state’s earliest educational documents intended for the general public, a 1926 ‘museum atlas of health’ (titled Sıhhî Müze Atlası) designed to enable ‘portable’ health instruction throughout the country, the caption of one of the images read, ‘Protection from malaria increases the power and wealth of the country.’ Below the image, a subcaption stated, ‘A malarial village and its surroundings attracted many villagers with its lush vegetation and a beautiful panorama that enticed them to settle, but [this malarial place] gradually devastated the inhabitants and condemned them to decay.’ ⁵⁰

To better realize success in their confrontation of this natural adversary and in their struggles with other maladies that threatened the republic’s populace, economy, and stability, leaders initiated a number of significant projects to survey and study the human and physical landscapes of Anatolia. Emerging several years before the official declaration of the republic in 1923, the Sıhhat ve İçtimai Muavenet Vekaleti (the ‘Ministry of Health and Social Assistance’) was established on 20 May 1920. Shortly thereafter, it directed provincial authorities and associated health officials to initiate data collection and reporting. These efforts resulted in the printing of a number of records collectively titled Türkiye’nin Sıhhî-i İçtimaî Coğrafyası (‘The Medical-Social Geography of Turkey,’ with subtitles designating particular provinces). The earliest of these emerged in 1922, and they were all published in Ottoman Turkish – except for the final volume, which came out in 1932. ⁵¹ Through these early surveys, we discern how particular diseases were framed – as matters of geography – and how their confrontation was integral to the development of municipal bureaucracies and infrastructure.

Ankara’s ‘struggles’ and ‘wars’ on malaria

Published in 1925, the socio-medical geography prepared for both the city and the province of Ankara was one of the first in-depth public health documents to emerge in the republican era that dealt specifically with the new capital. Authored by the ambitious Health and Social Assistance director for Ankara, Dr Muslihiddin Safvet, the study included information on the present circumstances of malaria and initial efforts focused on its control, along with descriptions of late Ottoman-era attempts to confront the disease and impressions of how it emerged as a problem in the Ankara region. ⁵² In its own right – as a document from this transitional period – this socio-medical geography is valuable both for this article’s preceding critique of a lack of continuity in the urban histories of Ankara from Ottoman to republican times and for prior historical geographies of public health in the emergent nation-state that addressed nationalist discourse concerning the ‘struggles’ and ‘wars’ with malaria but ignored Ottoman efforts and exaggerated the successes of the republic. ⁵³

On the matter of malaria in Ankara, my reading of Dr Muslihiddin Safvet’s geography has also benefited from an account of the disease in the capital published by Dr M. Talat in 1929 in the republic’s medical journal, Sıhhiye Mecmuası. ⁵⁴ Appointed as the head of Ankara’s antimalarial commission, Dr M. Talat, we may assume, was in a position subordinate to Dr Muslihiddin Safvet. While M. Talat’s account clearly derives from Muslihiddin Safvet’s prior survey, he drew upon additional sources and covered the years since the publication of Muslihiddin Safvet’s account. In both narratives, the malaria problem in the Ankara region appeared as a noteworthy concern during the final years of the Ottoman era. Referencing a foreign physician’s research on the disease in late Ottoman times, ⁵⁵ Muslihiddin Safvet observed, ‘In 1917, with regard to malaria, Ankara was no different than other Anatolian cities. For instance, it was no different than other cities [where] Schilling found a small number of malaria cases, such as Tarsus, Adana, and Aleppo.’ ⁵⁶

In other contexts within the empire, however, malaria did appear as a specific concern of society and state. Recalling the school lessons of his youth in Ottoman times, Dr Mazhar Osman later wrote:

I remember as if it was today when our teachers at the time of Sultan Abdulhamid said that three diseases will consume this country: malaria, syphilis, and tuberculosis. Malaria was Turkey’s greatest calamity. I can never forget when I was delivering a few health speeches in Dedeağaç during the first few years of the Constitution, and then I learned that malaria inflicted such damage to several villages that no one remained alive because of malaria; those few who survived were so pale and had such swollen bellies [as they] awaited their end, as their neighbors [had met] with a sad acquiescence . . . Was there not a treatment for malaria by then? . . . Ignorance and maladministration made people think that this fire that has been consuming people could not be put out. Like throwing a glass of water onto a great fire, by giving a patient three to five sulfato güllacı [güllacı refers to a Turkish dessert; it was likely wrapped around the sulfato medication] it considered the job done. ⁵⁷

Though previously experienced at a much lower incidence in the city, malaria in Ankara reportedly began to spread ‘in epidemic proportions’ by the third year of World War I. ⁵⁸ Commenting on malaria’s spread at the time, realist author Refik Halit Karay wrote of a ‘three-pronged weapon’ – much like a trident – that began to ravage the populations of Anatolia during the later war years:

There is a three-pronged weapon penetrating the flank of Anatolia: [its points are] malaria, tuberculosis, and syphilis. Let us see which government and which great leader will be destined to extract it from our body! Achieving this will be the greatest of kindnesses, the most essential of services, and the most brilliant of honors. ⁵⁹

According to the doctors’ writings, the increased incidence of the disease stemmed from factors related to the city’s wartime circumstances. These factors included the construction of a new rail line from Yahşihan and the arrival of associated workers; Ankara’s consequent emergence as a center of transit for peoples and patients ⁶⁰ during both World War I and the ensuing War of Independence; out-migration from areas more commonly afflicted by the disease to places like Ankara; and the city’s increased draw upon wider Anatolia for workers and materials as it developed and experienced increased demands for resources and housing. ⁶¹ Muslihiddin Safvet provided a specific example from the preceding years of the impact of railroads on Ankara and other cities: ‘Arif Bey, who was Director of Health in Ankara, in 1917 commented that engineers and officials informed him that officials and laborers with malaria began to be seen at a majority of train stations between Eskişehir and Ankara.’ ⁶²

Demographic dynamics – and other societal factors – culminated in 1923 and 1924 with major outbreaks of malaria throughout the city and province. However, climatic factors also appeared to be at play by 1924, once the surge of mosquitoes and malaria was already under way:

In 1924, it began to rain constantly in May and continued until the end of June. In July it heated up suddenly and created an atmosphere in which anopheles could be active. This July heat increased their numbers such that they appeared like a mosquito invasion. It peaked in August, September, and October, and it seemed as if there was no one left in the city without malaria. When malaria conquered the people in this fashion, it attracted close attention, and research in bacteriology began. ⁶³

As Dr M. Talat also recalled, ‘During those years a majority of the population had to refrain from working for numerous days or spend several hours of each day dealing with [their] malaria attacks, and practically no household was spared of suffering from it.’ ⁶⁴

Indeed, the working capabilities of citizens living in Ankara were compromised to such a degree that it became a matter of discussion in the nation’s parliament. On 29 December 1924, Falih Rıfkı, the representative from the north central province of Bolu, formally raised a question for the Minister of Health and Social Assistance regarding malaria. While this record may exhibit a measure of political posturing, it also speaks directly to the extent to which the disease had ‘paralyzed’ the operations of city and state:

This year’s malaria epidemic in Ankara had a bearing sometimes even on the state’s functions, as it was observed that some offices were paralyzed by malaria. If decisive and comprehensive measures are not taken, the damage will be worse in the coming year. Malaria in Ankara is like a calamity interrupting the operations of the state and almost prevents the settlement of new populations. I request that the Minister of Health [and Social Assistance] explain in one of our upcoming gatherings what he thinks about this and what he has done. ⁶⁵

The surge of malaria cases in 1923 and 1924, and associated risks that threatened the functioning of the state – compelled the leadership of the nationalists to take action. In addition to increased examinations of citizens and the promotion of research, one of the first major efforts in this direction was ordered by the executive administration of the state and initiated by the Minister of Health and Social Assistance, Dr Refik (Saydam): the nearby Babaharmanı marshes were drained. Situated near Ankara’s train station and occupying approximately four hectares, the Babaharmanı marshes were but the first of many wetlands to be drained throughout the Ankara region and all of Anatolia at a time when reclamation appeared to be the most proactive approach available to the state.

As Dr Muslihiddin Safvet wrote in his survey:

. . . distributing quinine is not sufficient in fighting malaria; draining the wetlands that cause the disease and applying the law in villages so rice fields must be far away from the towns and villages are important and necessary. Though the Ministry of Health and Social Assistance began to distribute free quinine tablets to villages for people in need free of charge, this is only a remedy, not a total solution. ⁶⁶

Presenting drainage of wetlands as the only true solution, the physician’s survey of Ankara contained maps intended to assist in this approach, at least within the capital and its province. While his maps did not visualize graduated scales of risk in the ways that a subsequent mapping project for the entire country did, ⁶⁷ they did outline particular high-risk locations in the province (i.e. wetlands and rice fields) (see Figure 2). In surveying the maps collectively, one notes that, as in the town of Nallıhan, quite a few reveal a greater number of charted rice fields than wetlands of natural derivation. Commenting on such sites, Muslihiddin Safvet discussed the wetlands and rice fields of Ankara province, noting malaria associated with, for example, marshes in Haymana and rice paddies in Ayaş. He pointed to the wetlands of Nallıhan, remarking that ‘there are almost no villages [in Nallıhan] without malaria’ – most of which were constructed for farming rice (see again Figure 2). ⁶⁸ Though rice farming did emerge as a focal point for legislation, explicit mention of it as causal (in the ways that natural wetlands were so identified) was uncommon in most documents. Despite these patterns, most early republican sources focused on environmental and demographic factors rather than ones that we may associate with expanding commercial agriculture. ⁶⁹

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Figure 2.

One of numerous maps and charts included in Dr Muslihiddin Safvet’s survey, this map depicts the town of Nallıhan at a scale of 1:200,000. Located in the province of Ankara, the village and its surroundings were noted for numerous cases of malaria. Corresponding with the disease’s prevalence, the map’s key notes some of the environments associated with it; the red dotted areas are marshes, and green shaded areas are sites of rice cultivation ⁷⁰ .

Following the initial drainage of wetlands in Ankara province, between 1925 and 1936, at least another 25,155 hectares (or just under 100 square miles) of wetlands were drained. ⁷¹ It might be reasonable to speculate that the actual area of wetlands that were drained was far higher; in many cases, sites like Babaharmanı were drained as a matter of constructing canals that could be opened for irrigation, not simply for purposes of public health. ⁷² In some cases, the administration of such lands and associated projects were achieved through the coordinated efforts of the Ministry of Health and Social Assistance and municipal authorities, whereas under other circumstances (e.g. when the outcomes of coordinated efforts failed to achieve expedient results or when the scale of projects was quite large) the work was simply left to the Ministry of Public Works. Moreover, in the earliest projects in Ankara, their perceived urgency meant that they were handled directly by the cabinet of ministers – sometimes even being authorized by Atatürk. ⁷³

Corresponding with these initial acts of reclamation in Ankara was the establishment of an Anatolia-wide antimalaria commission comprised of appointed experts. Meeting on 8 March 1925, the cabinet of ministers and Atatürk authorized this commission and thus formally initiated the republic’s antimalarial campaign. This formative meeting dealt specifically with particulars in Ankara’s development and campaign. ⁷⁴ As it emerged, the national commission also participated in the writing of drafts of the republic’s antimalarial legislation, overseeing campaigns to secure and distribute quinine and administering a wide range of other measures. ⁷⁵ Though it falls beyond the scope of this article’s linkage of the urban geographies of early Ankara with contemporary views on both nature/environment and disease, quinine distribution – administered both as a treatment and as a preventative – entailed unique geographies connecting republic and populace through the zoning of the city and province and the door-to-door connections established by the state’s functionaries. ⁷⁶ In addition to the republic’s commission, each province was intended to have a commission as well.

As the administrator of Ankara’s regional antimalaria commission from its establishment in 1925, Dr M. Talat supervised and recorded activities undertaken within particular zones in the city and its hinterlands. By 1926, at least six dispensaries were operational in the area, and these sites also administered spleen and blood tests in addition to providing treatment. The locations designated for these branches were central Ankara, surrounding Ankara, Polatlı, Sarıköy, Zir, and – though mentioned with lesser frequency in the records prior to 1928 – Keskin. Between 1925 and 1928, 132,789 malaria examinations and 63,454 blood tests were recorded for these branches. However, it may be assumed that many additional examinations and tests were also administered, as these figures only reflect those done independent of general physical examinations or emergency tests conducted during periods of peaking rates of transmission. ⁷⁷ The records of these tests reveal that all three types of malaria recorded commonly in Turkey (i.e. ‘Tersyana,’ ‘Tropika,’ and ‘Kuvartana’) were present in Ankara, with frequency varying by type throughout the year. The data from these findings were assembled and charted in M. Talat’s report (e.g. see Figure 3). ⁷⁸

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Figure 3.

One of a number of assorted charts and graphs that Dr M. Talat employed to represent the diversity and varying frequencies of malaria strains found in Ankara throughout the year ⁷⁹ .

Additional preventative measures (apart from the quinine that was distributed) also became a routine part of combating the disease – especially during the winter months. Organization of these efforts also fell to the local malaria commissions, with varying levels of oversight and control from republican-level authorities. In these years prior to DDT, such procedures often involved applications of chemical and other treatments (e.g. petroleum, Paris Green, tobacco dust, manure, or arap sabunu – ‘Arab’/soft soap) to locations where mosquitoes might be found, lay eggs, or bite people or livestock. ⁸⁰

By the winter of 1928, health officials noted that there were too few mosquitoes and cases to bother with recording; it appeared that Ankara had defeated its environmental foes. ⁸¹ As Mazhar Osman wrote, ‘While eight years ago malaria was a disease [that was entrenched] in Ankara, today, there is not even a sign of it; an excellent struggle succeeded in the elimination of mosquitoes, especially those carrying malaria.’ ⁸² Indeed, a law was passed in 1928 that awarded bonuses to personnel associated with the campaign in order to recognize their service to the nation. ⁸³ Though many contemporary sources depict it as a three-year effort, dating organized efforts to the 8 March 1925 meeting of the cabinet of ministers and Atatürk, it clearly had a longer history. Moreover, it was a project that was not so readily concluded in 1928. In many regards, this year marked the beginning of a transformation of the operation from local-regional to national scales. Soon thereafter, the perceived successes of the Ankara campaign were expanded to other critical sites (e.g. Adana, Aydin, and Konya). In places where commissions had not already been created, new ones were formed, and foreign experts were tapped for assistance; a research institute devoted to the study of malaria was established in Adana in 1928. ⁸⁴ Finally, though some projects associated with the new Ankara had fallen victim to the disease, ⁸⁵ the city was on secure footing for further planning and expansion as the republic’s capital.

Beyond ‘facade’: political ecologies of Ankara and the early republic

Though English-language accounts of the new capital tend to depict Anatolia a virtual desert, an excess of water and associated problems constituted a more pressing concern for the politicians and people who sought to make the city their home. Convening in early September 1925, the republic hosted its first medical congress in Ankara’s parliament building. Geared towards unifying Turkey’s political, medical, and public health communities, this meeting identified one particular disease as the foremost concern of the early state: malaria. ⁸⁶ By this time, the city itself had experienced the impacts of the disease, but efforts to counter its ravages and spread within the capital were also already under way. The environmental challenges to Turkey’s forward capital – and associated political ecologies of the early city – extended well beyond the aridity and the austerity that many at the time (and since) associated with it, especially in nationalist histories.

As an exercise in both critical analysis and conceptualization, moving beyond the unilinear structure of nationalist narratives should be our objective as we develop our understanding of past places and peoples. Within this article, I have demonstrated with specific examples from the secondary literature both the promise and the shortcomings of existing scholarship on early republican Ankara. Though much of the work cited here initiated critical studies focused on nationalism and modernity (a major contribution within Turkish studies!), it has also been narrow in conceptualization and scope of inquiry, and has failed to probe the depth of primary sources. Continued growth in this field of historical geographic research necessitates an expansion in vision and data. There are many additional (and alternative) narratives in the records from this era; creatively identifying and engaging with such sources in the coming decades is a task that is both essential and exciting.

By considering not only nature, but nature as connected with considerations of disease, public health, and well-being, I have provided one avenue for such scholarly development. Moreover, by focusing specifically on how the republic approached the environment, public health, and malaria in the 1920s, I have demonstrated both the continuities and contrasts in the empire-to-republic transition (as opposed to restating nationalist or other narratives of this shift) and the immense value of primary sources from the earliest years of the nation-state that were authored by overlooked yet key actors in the capital city’s development and administration. Just as many actors participated in formulating, legislating, and applying the republic’s public health policies, a multitude of interests and events coalesced to bring about other agendas and outcomes too often attributed solely to a singular state or its venerated leader. Identifying and analyzing these alternative voices of participants from this era – individuals who played vital roles in framing the republic’s political challenges and in formulating and pursuing solutions – elucidates the profound complexities of this crucial period and contributes substantially to our multidisciplinary attempts to better know the diverse politics, cultures, ecologies, and ideas in play as people designed and built the capital (and the wider nation-state) while also striving to ensure its citizens’ safety and well-being.