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

Abstract

Past scholarship on the origins of Turkey’s forward capital has contributed both to insightful critical analysis of modernity, nationalism, and urbanization in the republic but also to a tradition of work that is too often quite narrow in conceptualization and shallow in historical depth. In this article, I address the promise and the shortcomings of this tradition by incorporating both views of nature and novel primary documents from the city’s early republican pasts. Focusing on problems within 1920s Ankara as depicted in both foreign and nationalist narratives, on the one hand, and perspectives from public health and other state officials, on the other hand, I engage with water as a key problem not only in its scarcity but also in its excess. This research shows that not only planning but also the attainment of public health objectives (as framed in terms of place and nature) were established unambiguously as preconditions to the project of urban – and hence national – development. Additionally, as a study on the early republican capital that utilizes unique sources, this article identifies and analyzes alternative voices, thus expanding our views of the place and period in ways that elucidate the complex dynamics of both place-making and political ecology in this still contested context.

Full text

cultural geographies
2014, Vol. 21(3) 475 –496
© The Author(s) 2013
Reprints and permissions:
sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/1474474013512748
cgj.sagepub.com
Draining an Anatolian
desert: overcoming water,
wetlands, and malaria in early
republican Ankara
Kyle T. Evered
Michigan State University, USA
Abstract
Past scholarship on the origins of Turkey’s forward capital has contributed both to insightful
critical analysis of modernity, nationalism, and urbanization in the republic but also to a tradition
of work that is too often quite narrow in conceptualization and shallow in historical depth. In
this article, I address the promise and the shortcomings of this tradition by incorporating both
views of nature and novel primary documents from the city’s early republican pasts. Focusing on
problems within 1920s Ankara as depicted in both foreign and nationalist narratives, on the one
hand, and perspectives from public health and other state officials, on the other hand, I engage
with water as a key problem not only in its scarcity but also in its excess. This research shows
that not only planning but also the attainment of public health objectives (as framed in terms of
place and nature) were established unambiguously as preconditions to the project of urban – and
hence national – development. Additionally, as a study on the early republican capital that utilizes
unique sources, this article identifies and analyzes alternative voices, thus expanding our views
of the place and period in ways that elucidate the complex dynamics of both place-making and
political ecology in this still contested context.
Keywords
Ankara, historiography, malaria, nature, political ecology, public health, Turkey, urban history
Histories of Ankara’s designation as the capital of the Turkish republic, the city’s conception, and
its further development are analyzed regularly as matters of nation-building, modernization, secu-
larization, and even urban sprawl or squatting.1 Integral to these histories, but also constituting a
distinct trajectory of inquiry, is the construction of this forward capital as a uniquely planned and
Corresponding author:
Kyle T. Evered, Department of Geography, Michigan State University, 673 Auditorium Road, Geography Building,
East Lansing, MI 48824-1117, USA.
Email: ktevered@msu.edu
512748CGJ21310.1177/1474474013512748Cultural GeographiesEvered
research-article2013
Article

476 cultural geographies 21(3)
built environment amid the natural and human landscapes of Anatolia.2 Within both foreign and
Turkish accounts of the city, this nation-over-nature narrative often centers on the matter of mar-
shalling sufficient water to sustain intended – and eventually rapid and unforeseen – processes of
urbanization. However, while Western accounts from the 1920s and 1930s focused on the imagery
of central Anatolia as an arid place, often referring to it as a ‘desert’ or ‘steppe’ landscape, Turkish
depictions conveyed the dangers not only of water shortage but of excess water as well.3 Central to
these accounts, the region’s natural and man-made wetlands figured as hazardously diseased sites
that needed to be drained and reclaimed in order to achieve the city’s socioeconomic and political
promise.4 In this context, the acquisition of water resources and the attainment of public health
objectives (e.g. the draining of swamps) were established unambiguously as preconditions to this
project of urban – and hence national – development.
In this article, I draw and expand upon both the established scholarship on architecture and
identity in the nascent republic and an emerging body of research on disease and public health in
early Turkey.5 These works help me to realize three interrelated objectives. First, I identify both the
contributions and shortcomings of existing scholarship on the early capital, and I propose alterna-
tive approaches for its continued study. Second, I use this article to initiate an examination of how
nature – ranging from marshes to mosquitoes to microbes – constituted adversary and obstacle in
the 1920s geographies of nation and nation-building. Third, my work contextualizes and develops
our understandings of the significant roles of disease and public health not only in the early repub-
lic’s politics but also in its cultures of planning and urbanization. Beyond the related secondary
literature in Turkish studies and in geographies of nature/landscape and of public health, I rely
chiefly upon my analysis of official and unofficial primary sources. Among the official primary
sources that I employ are state publications from the 1920s through the 1940s that reveal how
republican officials, physicians, and other informants viewed and depicted the roles of the early
state, capital city, nature, and health. Included among the unofficial primary sources are unpub-
lished archival documents from the state and other stakeholders,6 travel and other observational
accounts, descriptive narratives from newspapers and periodicals, and literary depictions of condi-
tions and events from this era.
Establishing a basis for this study, I begin by assessing broadly the many geographies and
urban histories written about early republican Ankara over the past decades. While these schol-
arly works have made immense contributions with regard to our critical analysis of the Turkish
nation-state and its built environments and associated processes of modernization, I establish
that they also framed the histories of the early republic in ways that are limited profoundly in
both scope and historical depth (i.e. often lacking in primary sources – especially from the
1920s). In assessing the range of obstacles the environment posed to the developmental agendas
of the early Turkish republic, identifying the varied constructions of nature that were at play in
this period enables us to better appreciate not only how society and state viewed their own cir-
cumstances but also how they defined their progressive missions for Anatolia’s future. By sum-
marizing and analyzing these constructs, I show that nature and health/well-being were
inseparable within republican visions of modernity. In constructing Ankara, therefore, public
health priorities were as vital to place-making as they were to governing the populace. In the
latter sections of this study, I demonstrate these connections between policy, place, and popula-
tion by viewing how the early capital dealt with malaria.
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.

Evered 477
First, as already mentioned, the question of nature has been largely overlooked, with research hav-
ing 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 nostal-
gia, 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 post-
modern 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 expe-
riences.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 omit-
ted 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 minis-
tries – 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 follow-
ing observation by one political scientist is germane:

478 cultural geographies 21(3)
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 architec-
ture 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 com-
pelled 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 repub-
lic’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 pro-
jects 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 dis-
cussed,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 similar24 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:

Evered 479
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 capi-
tal 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 expres-
sions 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 (iden-
tified 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 pri-
mary 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 syn-
thetic.’ Drawing even closer to the new capital, however, he relates the ‘astonishing’ efforts

480 cultural geographies 21(3)
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 chal-
lenges 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 over-
come, 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 capi-
tal 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.

Evered 481
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 empha-
size 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 tradi-
tional sense. For past generations in Turkey and in comparable experiences elsewhere, such expres-
sions 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 dis-
ease 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 archi-
tects 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 com-
munity, 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 devel-
oped 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 initiatives47 much as Istanbul did for the empire that preceded the

482 cultural geographies 21(3)
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 wet-
lands 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 land-
scapes 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 consti-
tuted 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.
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 initi-
ated a number of significant projects to survey and study the human and physical landscapes of
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

Evered 483
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 bureau-
cracies 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 circum-
stances 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 geogra-
phies 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 antima-
larial 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

484 cultural geographies 21(3)
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 report-
edly 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 patients60 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 devel-
oped and experienced increased demands for resources and housing.61 Muslihiddin Safvet pro-
vided 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 meas-
ure 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

Evered 485
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 function-
ing 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 direc-
tion 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 con-
tained 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. wet-
lands 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 vil-
lages [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
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

486 cultural geographies 21(3)
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 treat-
ment 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 desig-
nated 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 emer-
gency 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
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 cultivation70.

Evered 487
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 applica-
tions 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
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 year79.

488 cultural geographies 21(3)
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 there-
after, 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 plan-
ning 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 unify-
ing Turkey’s political, medical, and public health communities, this meeting identified one particu-
lar 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 capi-
tal 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 struc-
ture 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 addi-
tional (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 over-
looked yet key actors in the capital city’s development and administration. Just as many actors

Evered 489
participated in formulating, legislating, and applying the republic’s public health policies, a multi-
tude of interests and events coalesced to bring about other agendas and outcomes too often attrib-
uted 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 complexi-
ties 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.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful for the suggestions and assistance received from cultural geographies editor Tim Cresswell and
the three anonymous referees who reviewed my submission. I am also particularly appreciative of the interli-
brary loan services staff at Michigan State University and their indulging my numerous requests – even from
foreign collections. Finally, I continue to thank İlhan Tekeli for inspiring this trajectory of research on the
historical geographies of malaria in the early Turkish republic.
Funding
Support contributing to this article was awarded by the Center for the Advanced Study of International
Development (CASID), the Center for Gender in a Global Context (GenCen), and the Muslim Studies
Program (all located at Michigan State University).
Notes
1. On nation-building and modernism in the republic’s architecture and urban design, note especially
S. Bozdoğan, Modernism and Nation Building: Turkish Architectural Culture in the Early Republic
(Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001) and selected chapters within S. Bozdoğan and R. Kasaba
(eds), Rethinking Modernity and National Identity in Turkey (Seattle: University of Washington Press,
1997). Specific to Ankara’s selection and early conceptualization, see İ. Tekeli and T. Okyay, ‘Case
Study of a Relocated Capital: Ankara’, in J.L. Taylor and D.G. Williams (eds), Urban Planning Practice
in Developing Countries (Oxford: Pergamon, 1982), pp. 123–44, and S. Akgün, ‘Kurtuluş Savaşının
Mekansal Stratejisi ve Ankara’nın Başkent Seçilmesi Kararının İçeriği’, in E. Yavuz and Ü.N. Uğurel
(eds), Tarih İçinde Ankara (Ankara: Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi, 1984), pp. 221–31. For a primary
source on planning the city, see H. Jansen, Ankara İmar Planı (Istanbul: Alaeddin Kıral Basımevi, 1937).
For secondary sources on Ankara’s planning, construction, and early histories, see F. Yavuz, Ankara’nın
İmari ve Şehirciliğimiz (Ankara: Güney Matbaacılık ve Gazetecilik, 1952); G. Tankut, Bir Başkentin
İmarı, Ankara: 1929–1939 (Istanbul: Anahtar Kitablar, 1993); M. Sarıoğlu, Ankara: Bir Modernleşme
Öyküsü (1919–1945) (Ankara: Kültür Bakanlığı, 2001); A. Cengizkan, Ankara’nın İlk Planı, Lörcher
Planı: Kentsel Mekan Özellikleri, 1932 Jansen Planı’na ve Bugüne Katkıları, Etki ve Kalıntıları (Ankara:
Ankara Enstitüsü Vakfı, 2004); K.T. Evered, ‘Symbolizing a Modern Anatolia: Ankara as Capital in
Turkey’s Early Republican Landscape’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle
East: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 28(2), 2008, pp. 326–41; Z. Kezer, ‘An Imaginable Community:
The Material Culture of Nation-Building in Early Republican Turkey’, Environment and Planning
D: Society and Space, 27(3), 2009, pp. 508–30; D. Kacar, ‘Ankara, a Small Town, Transformed to a
Nation’s Capital’, Journal of Planning History, 9(1), 2010, pp. 43–65; B. Batuman, ‘“Early Republican
Ankara”: Struggle over Historical Representation and the Politics of Urban Historiography’, Journal of
Urban History, 37(5), 2011, pp. 661–79; and, S. Sak and I. Basa, ‘The Role of the Train Station in the
Image Formation of the Early Republican Ankara’, Journal of Urban History, 38(4), 2012, pp. 777–802.
On matters of secularization – in terms of Ankara both as a distinct place from Istanbul (which was the
seat of the Caliphate – and under British and French occupation) and as a context for its implementation,

490 cultural geographies 21(3)
see E.Ö. Evered and K.T. Evered, ‘Decolonization through Secularization: A Geopolitical Reframing
of Turkey’s 1924 Abolition of the Caliphate’, The Arab World Geographer, 13(1), 2010, pp. 1–18, and
Z. Kezer, ‘Contesting Urban Space in Early Republican Ankara’, Journal of Architectural Education,
52(1), 1998, pp. 11–19. Finally, on Turkey’s particular experiences with urban sprawl/squatting (i.e.
gecekondu), see K.H. Karpat, Gecekondu: Rural Migration and Urbanization (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1976), and T. Şenyapılı, Ankara Kentinde Gecekondu Gelişimi (1923–1960) (Ankara:
Batıkent Konut Üretim Yapı Kooperatifleri Birliği, 1985).
2. While ideas and symbolisms of nature, the environment, and associated human-natural landscapes are
cited in existing works (e.g. in terms of urban green space, with regard to the conquest-of-nature symbol-
isms evident from Ankara’s Çubuk Dam, and with respect to the objectives underlying Ankara’s urban
forest-farm and associated efforts to ‘colonize the countryside’ – all mentioned in Bozdoğan, Modernism
and Nation Building), there exist thus far no sources that seek to problematize these issues in rudimen-
tary terms (e.g. ‘how was nature constructed in/by the early republic?’). To that end, this article seeks to
initiate this inquiry.
3. Prior to the 1950s, it can be noted that many Turkish authors also depicted the wider Anatolian interior
as a vast ‘empty’ or ‘lost’ space – as analyzed in A. Yazıcı Yakın, ‘“There is a Village Somewhere Out
There”: Representations of Anatolia as Terra Incognita’, Journal of Historical Sociology, 20(1/2), 2007,
pp. 182–99.
4. Analyzing Turkey’s confrontation of malaria as a project in nation-building, one of the earliest aca-
demic works to address the historical relevance of this mission was İ. Tekeli and S. İlkin, ‘Türkiye’de
Sıtma Mücadelesinin Tarihi’, in G.E. Kundakçı (ed.), 70. Yılında Ulusal ve Uluslararası Boyutlarıyla
Atatürk’ün Büyük Nutuk’u ve Dönemi (Ankara: ODTÜ Basım İşliği, 1999), pp. 209–55.
5. On architecture and identity in Turkey, note Bozdoğan, Modernism and Nation Building, and Bozdoğan
and Kasaba (eds), Rethinking Modernity and National Identity in Turkey. Among emerging works to
examine historical geographies of disease and public health in Turkey, see: K.T. Evered and E.Ö. Evered,
‘Governing Population, Public Health, and Malaria in the Early Turkish Republic’, Journal of Historical
Geography, 37(4), 2011, pp. 470–82; K.T. Evered and E.Ö. Evered, ‘Syphilis and Prostitution in the
Socio-medical Geographies of Turkey’s Early Republican Provinces’, Health and Place, 18(3), 2012,
pp. 528–35; K.T. Evered and E.Ö. Evered, ‘State, Peasant, Mosquito: The Biopolitics of Public Health
Education and Malaria in Early Republican Turkey’, Political Geography, 31(5), 2012, pp. 311–23; E.Ö.
Evered and K.T. Evered, ‘Sex and the Capital City: The Political Framing of Syphilis and Prostitution
in Early Republican Ankara’, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 68(2), 2013, pp.
266–99; and, E.Ö. Evered and K.T. Evered, ‘“Protecting the National Body”: Regulating the Practice
and the Place of Prostitution in Early Republican Turkey’, Gender, Place and Culture, 2013, doi:
10.1080/0966369X.2012.753584.
6. Most archival documents analyzed for this study derive from the Başbakanlık Cumhuriyet Arşivi (the
Prime Minister’s Archive of the Republic), located in Ankara, Turkey. As is customary in Turkish his-
toriography, I reference these sources hereafter with the acronym ‘BCA’ (i.e. Başbakanlık Cumhuriyet
Arşivi) and then list their assigned record numbers.
7. Batuman, ‘“Early Republican Ankara”’. Exemplifying the latter tradition, we must include the afore-
cited works of Bozdoğan, Modernism and Nation Building, and those appearing in Bozdoğan and
Kasaba (eds), Rethinking Modernity and National Identity in Turkey. Moreover, adding to these sources,
Batuman cited in his article a number of related PhD dissertations authored in the late 1990s that also
reflected this tradition.
8. Batuman, ‘“Early Republican Ankara”’.
9. As but one example, we may note a recent article that sought to analyze ‘spatial strategies used to achieve
national integration in the formative years (1923–45) of the Turkish Republic’ – with a self-declared
special focus on state ‘infrastructural projects’ and related services; Kezer, ‘An Imaginable Community’.
Though the study presents a compelling narrative and argument, there are absolutely no primary sources
incorporated in the study that date prior to 1930.
10. This observation should not be interpreted as a criticism of analyzing images per se (e.g. as when maps
or other representations of the landscape – or the landscape itself – are examined ‘as text’). Indeed,

Evered 491
such scholarship has come to constitute both a significant tradition and an established approach within
human geography; J.B. Harley, ‘Historical Geography and the Cartographic Illusion’, Journal of
Historical Geography, 15(1), 1989, pp. 80–91; chapters in D.E. Cosgrove and S.J. Daniels (eds),
The Iconography of Landscape: Essays on the Symbolic Representation, Design and Use of Past
Environments (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); many of the chapters in J. Duncan and
D. Ley (eds), Place/Culture/Representation (London: Routledge, 1993); and most recently with G.
Rose, Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to Researching with Visual Materials, 3rd edn (London:
SAGE, 2012). However, the degrees to which one can analyze effectively imagery (e.g. architectural
styles, motifs, and so forth) must depend – in no small measure – upon the degrees to which one also
analyzes thoroughly and competently accompanying – and preceding – written texts that exist within
the associated historical record.
11. We are finally beginning to witness the appearance of a significant number of works – especially from
emergent scholars – that focus on this transitional period in ways that extend beyond the central core
of the early republic and its leader, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, and that engage matters within a critical/
social history framework. In particular, I would point to the growing number of excellent master’s and
doctoral theses emerging from Boğaziçi University’s Atatürk Institute for Modern Turkish History (at:
http://www.ata.boun.edu.tr/thesis.html). Also note M.D. Wyers’s recent book ‘Wicked’ Istanbul: The
Regulation of Prostitution in the Early Turkish Republic (Istanbul: Libra Kitapçılık ve Yayınçılık, 2012)
as a published example of a work that delves thoroughly into the primary literature of the 1920s to render
a more complete view of the ‘early republic’.
12. Ottoman Turkish was the state language of both the Ottoman Empire and the early republic – until the
implementation of alphabet and linguistic reforms in the late 1920s and thereafter. On this history of
linguistic nationalism and modernization, note G. Lewis, The Turkish Language Reform: A Catastrophic
Success (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).
13. This tendency to overlook key texts from and about the state during the 1920s and early 1930s is
made evident through recent historical geographies concerning disease and public health. Relying
upon key – but largely overlooked – primary publications by Turkey’s Ministry of Health and Social
Assistance (many of which were in Ottoman Turkish), such works demonstrate critical ways in which
public health concerns prioritized state-wide decision-making in the early republican era; Evered and
Evered, ‘Governing Population, Public Health, and Malaria in the Early Turkish Republic’, ‘Sex and the
Capital City’, ‘Syphilis and Prostitution in the Socio-medical Geographies of Turkey’s Early Republican
Provinces’, and ‘State, Peasant, Mosquito’.
14. If we were to think of such histories of the early Turkish republic in line with those of the early Soviet
era, for example, we would need to envision a tradition of writing about ‘early Soviet history’ that would
not commence until after the New Economic Policy, the death of Lenin in 1924, the imposition of col-
lectivization, and the 1932 announcement of the conclusion of the first Five-Year Plan; at least we could
learn about the purges of the late 1930s. However, we would also need to envision a history attributed
almost entirely to Stalin. While ‘great man’ theories of Stalinist-era Eurasia clearly are not accepted by
today’s historians of the Soviet Union, scholars of Turkey’s ‘early republic’ could benefit appreciably by
further distancing themselves from the ‘great man’ approach.
15. J. Migdal, ‘Finding the Meeting Ground of Fact and Fiction: Some Reflections on Turkish Modernization’,
in Bozdoğan and Kasaba (eds), Rethinking Modernity and National Identity in Turkey, pp. 256–7.
16. Jansen, Ankara İmar Planı; on Lörcher, see Cengizkan, Ankara’nın İlk Planı, Lörcher Planı; and,
A.O. McCormick, ‘The Self-Determined Turk: From His Mud Village of Angora He Has Declared His
Independence of East and West’, The New York Times, 4 May 1924, p. SM1. McCormick continued her
depiction of foreign intrigues – and local misgivings about them – by claiming, ‘no manifestation of
foreign opinion passes unnoticed. Nothing that goes on anywhere escapes the ranging eye of Angora . . .
The foreigner is under constant surveillance.’
17. As with the chapters in K.H. Karpat (ed), Ottoman Past and Today’s Turkey (Leiden: Brill, 2000).
18. A. Mills, ‘The Ottoman Legacy: Urban Geographies, National Imaginaries, and Global Discourses of
Tolerance’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, 31(1), 2011, pp. 183–95;
and, A. Mills, J.A. Reilly and C. Philliou, ‘The Ottoman Empire from Present to Past: Memory and

492 cultural geographies 21(3)
Ideology in Turkey and the Arab World’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle
East, 31(1), 2011, pp. 133–6.
19. Bozdoğan, Modernism and Nation Building, pp. 11, 75–8, 120–3, 179–80.
20. Sultan Abdülhamid II’s desire to develop the region later associated with the Atatürk Dam and wider
G.A.P. initiatives were noted (with cited documents) in Ö.F. Yılmaz, Belgelerle Sultan İkinci Abdülhamîd
Han (Istanbul: Osmanlı Yayınevi, 1999), pp. 259–61.
21. Bozdoğan, Modernism and Nation Building, pp. 11, 75–77.
22. On this and other public works projects undertaken during the Hamidian era of the late Ottoman Empire,
see Yılmaz, Belgelerle Sultan İkinci Abdülhamîd Han, pp. 237–43.
23. Bozdoğan, Modernism and Nation Building, pp. 87–105.
24. As addressed in both B.C. Fortna, Imperial Classroom: Islam, the State, and Education in the Late
Ottoman Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) and E.Ö. Evered, Empire and Education
under the Ottomans: Politics, Reform, and Resistance from the Tanzimat to the Young Turks (London:
I.B. Tauris, 2012). On educational efforts during the Hamidian period, see also Yılmaz, Belgelerle Sultan
İkinci Abdülhamîd Han, pp. 226–35.
25. This restating of the state (and its narrative) occurs in much the same manner as identified by Batuman
when he observed that many critical studies of ‘early republican Ankara’ are beholden to the same nos-
talgia that they seek to cast away; Batuman, ‘“Early Republican Ankara”’. This predicament of trying
to escape from the modern nation-state’s typically unilinear narrative of its own history is addressed,
in particular, in P. Duara, Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Narratives of Modern China
(Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1995).
26. In her introduction to Modernism and Nation Building, Bozdoğan discussed why she felt James C. Scott
omitted Turkey from inclusion among those examples of ‘high modernism’ that he profiled in Seeing
Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1998). In doing so, she spoke directly of why Turkey and Atatürk should be excluded
from such a study – and her statement reveals such an appreciation for not merely form or style but also
conviction; Atatürk was ‘[d]eified as a secularist and Westernizer by many Turks, detested for the same
reasons by others, but ultimately revered as a soldier and national hero by all’, p. 11. Drawing examples
from the secondary literature on many cases of modernist developmentalism, Scott’s distinguished essay
could have included Turkey, I contend, as the work did not seem to claim an exhaustive summary of all
relevant cases. Moreover, many examples that Scott did include were cases in which citizens also evi-
denced profound measures of conviction. For instance, though Scott included one of the greatest failures
of Soviet modernist planning (i.e. collectivization, pp. 193–222), the most vivid example of citizens’
attachment to a pre-German invasion Soviet state that I recall from my own studies includes people giv-
ing their children names like Elektrifikatsia, Traktor, and even Stalina or Stalnira; A. Sinyavsky, Soviet
Civilization: A Cultural History (New York: Arcade Publishing, 1990), pp. 194–5.
27. J. Migdal, ‘Finding the Meeting Ground of Fact and Fiction’, p. 255.
28. J. Migdal, ‘Finding the Meeting Ground of Fact and Fiction’, p. 255.
29. J.C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1990).
30. Regarding the social construction of nature and its study in environmental history, one of the first sig-
nificant examples (focused on the context of colonial New England) came with W. Cronon, Changes in
the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Economy of New England (New York: Hill and Wang, 1983) – a
theme developed further in W. Cronon, ‘The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong
Nature’, in W. Cronon (ed.), Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature (New York:
W.W. Norton, 1995) pp. 69–90. For a discussion of the concept – almost 20 years since Changes in the
Land – that incorporated subsequent approaches (e.g. ANT), note also D. Demeritt, ‘What is the “Social
Construction of Nature”? A Typology and Sympathetic Critique’, Progress in Human Geography, 26(6),
2002, pp. 767–90.
31. ‘Angora From the Anatolia Restaurant’, The New York Times, 14 January 1923, p. SM6.
32. McCormick, ‘The Self-Determined Turk’, p. SM1.
33. E. Marshall, ‘Kemal Had Vision in Building Angora’, The New York Times, 19 December 1926, p. E3.

Evered 493
34. Based upon his survey of archival records of the Rockefeller Foundation (i.e. RFA, RG 1.1, series 805,
box 1, folder 3–4), the late archivist and Assistant Director at Rockefeller Archive Center Kenneth W.
Rose noted that Admiral Mark Bristol, the United States High Commissioner in Turkey, ‘was anxious
for public health work’ to commence ‘especially because many Americans sent to the new capital of
Ankara came down with malaria’; K.W. Rose, ‘The Rockefeller Foundation’s Fellowship Program in
Turkey, 1925–1983’. Unpublished paper presented at ‘The First Turks in America’ Symposium, Yeditepe
University, Istanbul, Turkey, 4 January 2003, p. 25.
35. H. Denny, ‘The City That Reveals the New Turkey’, The New York Times, 8 March 1936, p. SM11. In this
article, Denny primarily spoke to the advances of the city over the past decade; as the subhead to the title
read, ‘Ancient Ankara, a Lively Capital, Has Cast Off Its Forty Centuries of Orientalism and Become an
Ultra-Modernistic Community.’
36. A.E. Yalman, Turkey in My Time (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1956).
37. Y.K. Karaosmanoğlu, Ankara, 3rd edn (Istanbul: Remzi Kitabevi, 1964), pp. 74–5.
38. For example, this predicament of water scarcity was dealt with – in an almost mocking fashion – in the
short news article ‘Angora Has Running Water’, The New York Times, 27 July 1927, p. 28. With a sub-
head that read ‘But Turkish Capital’s Supply Is Only by Cupful as Yet’, the otherwise unattributed piece
notes that in many places (i.e. ‘the best restaurants and hotels’) within the capital, ‘running water’ simply
implies that it is poured by an attendant.
39. Clearly, there have been countless examples in the history of the United States both of transforming
nature to be more aesthetically pleasing or commercially fruitful and of subduing it as a frontier to be
overcome. There have also been, however, innumerable examples from other contexts.
40. On Ankara’s symbolism of – and on its invention as the center of – Anatolia’s internal frontier, note
Evered, ‘Symbolizing a Modern Anatolia’, pp. 329–30.
41. In this context, we might note the increasing prevalence of ideas concerning governance and biopoli-
tics; on both concepts and the specific case of malaria in Turkey, note Evered and Evered, ‘Governing
Population, Public Health, and Malaria in the Early Turkish Republic’ and ‘State, Peasant, Mosquito’.
42. In Timothy Mitchell’s Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2002), we see in his first chapter (‘Can the Mosquito Speak?’, pp. 19–53) the inte-
gration of otherwise disparate historical narratives from Egypt’s modern history to better analyze and
explain how malaria spread more broadly and constituted a greater danger to human lives. At the scale
of Ankara at the time of its emergence as a capital city, this article also demonstrates a bringing together
of disparate narratives (i.e. those of Turkish urban history and of medical history) to better interrogate
and convey how perceptions of both a disease and the appropriate ways to confront it contributed to
particular trajectories in the city’s development and its associated political and built landscapes.
43. This scientism was a cultural theme that had a solid foundation in the late Ottoman context, and it became
ever more manifest through much of the republican era – arguably into the present day, as evidenced by
one Turkish authority on mental health. Commenting specifically on the transition from empire to republic
in the sphere of science and malariology, Mazhar Osman (1884–1961) noted that World War I-era doc-
tors – more than any of their predecessors – contributed to emergent understandings about the disease
and established the ‘necessity of the antimosquito struggle, state quinine, swamp drainage, etc.’ Though
undertaken at limited scales, they helped to arrive at the fennî çareler (or ‘scientific solutions’) adopted by
the modernist republic of the 1920s; ‘Cümhuriyetin Sıhhat Siyaseti’, in M. Osman (ed.), Sıhhat Almanakı:
Cumhuriyetin Onuncu Senesini Kutlularken (Istanbul: Kader Matbaası, 1933), p. 39. On cultures of sci-
ence and scientism – particularly from a geographic viewpoint, note D.N. Livingstone, Putting Science in
Its Place: Geographies of Scientific Knowledge (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003).
44. Again, this brings us back to the central issues of governance and biopolitics, as addressed in Evered and
Evered, ‘Governing Population, Public Health, and Malaria in the Early Turkish Republic’ and ‘State,
Peasant, Mosquito’.
45. Focusing on this public health propaganda, note Evered and Evered, ‘State, Peasant, Mosquito’.
46. As the early republic’s director of public health for Ankara declared, ‘This first struggle will lead to more
successful examples in our country in the future.’ Dr Muslihiddin Safvet, Türkiye’nin Sıhhî-i İçtimaî
Coğrafyası: Ankara Vilâyeti (Istanbul: Hilâl Matbaası, 1925), p. 92.

494 cultural geographies 21(3)
47. We may note this function of Ankara both as pilot project and as subsequent example for the nation in the
kinds of narratives generated by the state. In public health, this was clearly the case with the republic’s
confrontation of another medical scourge, syphilis (see Evered and Evered, ‘Sex and the Capital City’).
More broadly, for agriculture, we might again recall the intended functions for Atatürk Orman Çiftliği –
Ankara’s so-called forest farm, a site intended both to promote modern research in agricultural (and even
food) sciences (almost like the land grant state universities of the American Midwest) and to function as
an idyllic and unifying green space within the modern capital; see also K.T. Evered, ‘Past and Present
Symbolisms of Ankara’s Atatürk Orman Ciftliği: A Landscape of National Corporatism’, research paper
presented at the AAG annual conference, New Orleans, Louisiana, 2003; and, Evered, ‘Symbolizing a
Modern Anatolia’, pp. 330–1.
48. On such examinations and their legacies, see E.Ö. Evered and K.T. Evered, ‘“Protecting the National
Body”: Regulating the Practice and the Place of Prostitution in Early Republican Turkey’, Gender, Place,
and Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography, accepted/forthcoming/in-press.
49. Given the republic’s anxieties over a collapse in the population (see Evered and Evered’s discussion of
a ‘demographic discourse’ in ‘Governing Population, Public Health, and Malaria in the Early Turkish
Republic’), we thus witness one example of how a discourse of ‘biosecurity’ can ‘wed’ – and derive from
– biopolitics and geopolitics, as per B. Braun, ‘Biopolitics and the Molecularization of Life’, cultural
geographies, 14(1), 2007, pp. 6–28.
50. T.C. Sıhhiye ve Muavenet-i İçtimaîye Vekaleti, Sıhhî Müze Atlası (no publisher information, 1926), p.
4; copy examined is held at the TBMM (Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi) Kütüphanesi (the Library of the
Grand National Assembly of Turkey), Ankara. Images accompanying this illustration from the atlas were
presented and analyzed previously in Evered and Evered, ‘State, Peasant, Mosquito’.
51. Dr Besim Zühtü, Türkiye’nin Sıhhî-i İçtimaî Coğrafyası: Hamidabad (Isparta) Sancağı (Ankara: Öğüd
Matbaası, 1922); Dr Hıfzı Nuri, Türkiye’nin Sıhhî-i İçtimaî Coğrafyası: Kayseri Sancağı (Ankara: Öğüd
Matbaası, 1922); Dr Kemal, Türkiye’nin Sıhhî-i İçtimaî Coğrafyası: Kastamonu Vilayeti (Ankara: Öğüd
Matbaası, 1922); Dr Mehmet Hayri, Türkiye’nin Sıhhî-i İçtimaî Coğrafyası: Niğde Sancağı, transcribed
by İ. Gedik (Niğde: n.p., 1994/1922 original); Dr Nazmi, Türkiye’nin Sıhhî-i İçtimaî Coğrafyası: Konya
Vilayeti (Ankara: Öğüd Matbaası, 1922); and Dr Hasan Tahsin, Türkiye’nin Sıhhî-i İçtimaî Coğrafyası:
Sivas Vilâyeti (Istanbul: Hilâl Matbaası, 1932). Apart from the socio-medical geography published
for Niğde, only one other has been transcribed and made available thus far in modern Turkish; Dr
Mehmet ali, Türkiye’nin Sıhhî-i İçtimaî Coğrafyası: Sivas Vilâyeti, transcribed by M.S. Koz (Istanbul:
Çatalca Belediye Başkanlığı, 1991/1925 original).
52. Dr Muslihiddin Safvet, Türkiye’nin Sıhhî-i İçtimaî Coğrafyası. Providing more insight into how
Muslihiddin Safvet pursued his duties in Ankara – with a focus on antisyphilis campaigns in the city, see
Evered and Evered, ‘Sex and the Capital City’.
53. Pointing to M. Süyev’s Sıtma Savaşı Çalışmaları Albümü (Istanbul: Hüsnütabiat Matbaası, 1953) – a
celebratory work on the nation’s presumed victory in its ‘malaria war,’ this sort of nationalist appropria-
tion (and embellishment) of the republic’s antimalarial campaigns was not particularly uncommon; see
Evered and Evered, ‘Governing Population, Public Health, and Malaria in the Early Turkish Republic’
and ‘State, Peasant, Mosquito’. Indeed, even in Muslihiddin Safvet’s survey, the public health director
declared, ‘Until now, people who ruled the land viewed malaria as insignificant and neglected it; malaria
thus settled in nicely [in Anatolia]. I believe that our Republican government will attend to this important
issue and save the country from malaria.’ Dr Muslihiddin Safvet, Türkiye’nin Sıhhî-i İçtimaî Coğrafyası,
p. 92.
54. Dr M. Talat, ‘Ankara’da Sıtma ve Sıtma Mücadele Teşkilatı’, Sıhhiye Mecmuası, 5(31–2), 1929, pp.
1311–59.
55. Numerous other foreign physicians who worked either at the behest of the empire (and of the republic, in
later years) or for other concerns (e.g. for research institutes, for foreign entities involved in the construc-
tion of railways, and for others) are also mentioned in these surveys. During the years of World War I, for
example, a Dr Betmann – who had been working with the poor since 1916 – was active in Ankara, and he
also indicated surges in the incidence of malaria from 1917 onward; Dr Muslihiddin Safvet, Türkiye’nin
Sıhhî-i İçtimaî Coğrafyası, pp. 92–3. Though there have been studies examining the internationalization

Evered 495
of architecture and planning (such as E. Akcan, Architecture in Translation: Germany, Turkey, and the
Modern House [Durham: Duke University Press, 2012]), no such studies yet exist with regard to the
pre–World War II medical communities of Ottoman and republican Turkey.
56. Dr Muslihiddin Safvet, Türkiye’nin Sıhhî-i İçtimaî Coğrafyası, p. 93.
57. M. Osman, ‘Cümhuriyetin Sıhhat Siyaseti’, in M. Osman (ed.), Sıhhat Almanakı: Cumhuriyetin Onuncu
Senesini Kutlularken (Istanbul: Kader Matbaası, 1933), p. 39.
58. Dr M. Talat, ‘Ankara’da Sıtma ve Sıtma Mücadele Teşkilatı’, p. 1312; also affirmed by Dr Muslihiddin
Safvet, Türkiye’nin Sıhhî-i İçtimaî Coğrafyası, p. 93.
59. Cited from a Refik Halit Karay contribution to the 18 July 1918 issue of the periodical Yeni Mecmua
3(53) in H. Dilevurgun, Sosyal Ijyen (Istanbul: Güven Basımevi, 1947), p. 443.
60. K. Özbay, Türk Asker Hekimliği Tarihi ve Asker Hastaneleri (Istanbul: Yörük Basımevi, 1976), pp.
412–14.
61. Dr M. Talat, ‘Ankara’da Sıtma ve Sıtma Mücadele Teşkilatı’, pp. 1312–13.
62. Dr Muslihiddin Safvet, Türkiye’nin Sıhhî-i İçtimaî Coğrafyası, p. 94.
63. Following this quote was a detailed account of the efforts of bacteriologist Hüseyin Kemal Bey at the
Cebeci Military Hospital; Dr Muslihiddin Safvet, Türkiye’nin Sıhhî-i İçtimaî Coğrafyası, pp. 92–3.
64. Dr M. Talat, ‘Ankara’da Sıtma ve Sıtma Mücadele Teşkilatı’, p. 1311. These assertions as to the severity
of the 1923 and 1924 outbreaks are verified repeatedly by references to the problem of malaria during
these years as found in related archival documents (e.g. BCA 030-10-00-00-7-39-27).
65. BCA 030-10-00-00-7-39-27. The Minister of Health and Social Assistance was not present on 29
December 1924, and the request was forwarded to the ministry the following day. There was no direct
mention in the archival records or in the parliament’s published record (i.e. TBMM Tutanak Dergisi) for
1925 of any direct response to the representative’s request.
66. Dr Muslihiddin Safvet, Türkiye’nin Sıhhî-i İçtimaî Coğrafyası, pp. 101–2.
67. In the following year, the physicians Abdülkadir Lütfi (Noyan) and Ahmed Fikri presented their
comprehensive map of malaria throughout Anatolia at the nation-state’s first medical congress, and
through their map they strived to incorporate graduated zones of risk; Abdülkadir Lütfi (Noyan) and
Ahmed Fikri, ‘Türkiye’de Sıtmanın Coğrafyası’, in Anonymous (ed.), Birinci Millî Türk Tıb Kongresi
Müzakerâtı (Istanbul: Kader, 1926), pp. 212–33. This map was analyzed and reproduced previously in
Evered and Evered, ‘Governing Population, Public Health, and Malaria in the Early Turkish Republic’,
pp. 476–9.
68. Dr Muslihiddin Safvet, Türkiye’nin Sıhhî-i İçtimaî Coğrafyası, p. 100.
69. It should be noted that the cultivation of rice was conducted in Turkey during this period largely for
the market, whereas cultivation for subsistence more often involved the production of bulgur (a wheat-
based staple consumed throughout rural Turkey); T. Güneş, Türkiye Çeltik Ekonomisi (Ankara: Ankara
Üniversitesi Basımevi, 1971), pp. 164–5. Connecting the country’s circumstances of poverty, capitalist
agriculture, profiteering by rice growers, their purchase of political influence, and the consequences of
malaria on the people, the physician and parliamentarian M. Şerif Korkut later wrote a radical critique;
Isıtma ve Çeltik (Ankara: Yeni Matbaa, 1950).
70. Dr Muslihiddin Safvet, Türkiye’nin Sıhhî-i İçtimaî Coğrafyası, insert.
71. İ. Tekeli and S. İlkin, ‘Türkiye’de Sıtma Mücadelesinin Tarihi’, p. 237.
72. Dr M. Talat, ‘Ankara’da Sıtma ve Sıtma Mücadele Teşkilatı’, pp. 1347–8.
73. As with one case from June 1925 that involved lands designated to be drained for public health reasons;
once this was achieved, they were designated for redevelopment as a park (BCA 030-0-18-01-01-014-
42-7-001). As an example of how costs of such projects were shared at republic and municipal levels, not
also the specifics of initial projects in Ankara (BCA 030-0-18-01-01-013-13-11-001).
74. BCA 030-0-18-01-01-013-13-11-001.
75. Dr M. Talat, ‘Ankara’da Sıtma ve Sıtma Mücadele Teşkilatı’, p. 1313. For greater detail on these initia-
tives, see Evered and Evered, ‘Governing Population, Public Health, and Malaria in the Early Turkish
Republic’.
76. Note, offering an assessment of the quinine program, Dr Lebib, ‘Ankara Sıtma Mücadelesi Tedkikatindan:
Sivil Ahaliye Vaki Olaral Kinin İtasi’, in Anonymous (ed.), Birinci Millî Türk Tıb Kongresi Müzakerâtı

496 cultural geographies 21(3)
(Istanbul: Kader, 1926), pp. 306–13. On quinine distribution, see also Dr M. Talat, ‘Ankara’da Sıtma ve
Sıtma Mücadele Teşkilatı’, p. 1355.
77. Dr M. Talat, ‘Ankara’da Sıtma ve Sıtma Mücadele Teşkilatı’, p. 1334.
78. Dr M. Talat, ‘Ankara’da Sıtma ve Sıtma Mücadele Teşkilatı’, pp. 1340–4; and, as noted previously in Dr
Muslihiddin Safvet, Türkiye’nin Sıhhî-i İçtimaî Coğrafyası, pp. 92–3. Note that these terms employed in
Turkey at this time to indicate varieties of malaria most likely were as follows: Tropika, tropicana, and
Malaria tropicana were used for what is recognized today as Plasmodium falciparum – the most deadly
strain of malaria; Tersyana, tersiyana, and Malaria tersiana were utilized commonly for Plasmodium
ovale; and Kuvartana, quartan and Malaria quartan implied Plasmodium malariae (as suggested in
Evered and Evered, ‘Governing Population, Public Health, and Malaria in the Early Turkish Republic’,
p. 476).
79. Dr M. Talat, ‘Ankara’da Sıtma ve Sıtma Mücadele Teşkilatı’, p. 1342.
80. Dr M. Talat, ‘Ankara’da Sıtma ve Sıtma Mücadele Teşkilatı’, pp. 1346–51.
81. Dr M. Talat, ‘Ankara’da Sıtma ve Sıtma Mücadele Teşkilatı’, p. 1355.
82. M. Osman, ‘Cümhuriyetin Sıhhat Siyaseti’, p. 40.
83. M. Özpekcan, ‘Büyük Millet Meclisi Tutanaklarına Göre Türkiye Cumhuriyeti’nde Sağlık Politikası
(1923–1933), II. Bölüm,’ Yeni Tıp Tarihi Araştırmaları/The New History of Medicine Studies, 8, 2002, p.
211.
84. In particular, noted malariologists from Germany, E. Martini and H. Vogel, were hired; M. Özpekcan,
‘Büyük Millet Meclisi Tutanaklarına Göre Türkiye Cumhuriyeti’nde Sağlık Politikası (1923–1933), II.
Bölüm,’ p. 191.
85. For example, in his study, Recep Akdur concludes that the initiative to establish Ataturk Orman Çiftliği
resulted in an eventual failure. He attributes the demise of this project to two factors: (1) a lack of educa-
tion and training for the farmers recruited to work on and manage the farm, and (2) the prevalence of
mosquitoes and malaria in the area of the farm. According to Akdur, those families that settled in the
farm’s housing could not endure the mosquitoes and malaria, and large numbers simply left. In the end,
shortly after Atatürk’s death, the original vision of the farm was also abandoned by republican leaders,
and the site was relegated to being merely a place for picnics; Sıtma Temel Bilgiler (Ankara: Palme
Yayıncılık, 2004), p. 9.
86 It should be noted that other key diseases were also identified and prioritized ever since the establishment
of the Ministry of Health and Social Assistance. Other significant maladies included syphilis, trachoma,
typhoid, and tuberculosis. Analyzing particular key papers presented at this congress, note Evered and
Evered, ‘Governing Population, Public Health, and Malaria in the Early Turkish Republic’.
Author biography
Kyle T. Evered is Associate Professor of Geography at Michigan State University. His research focuses on
questions of society-state relations (especially those entailing approaches to and modes of governance) in
terms of identity construction, ecologies and environmental histories, and disease and public health. His
research and teaching engages regionally with the wider Middle East and post-Soviet Eurasia, though his
specific concentration in publishing centers on geographies of Ottoman and republican Turkey. In addition to
authoring and co-authoring numerous articles, he is co-editor (with Jiaguo Qi) of Environmental Problems of
Central Asia and Their Economic, Social, and Security Impacts (New York: Springer, 2008) and (with
Michael K. Goodman and Maxwell T. Boykoff) of Contentious Geographies: Environmental Knowledge,
Meaning, Scale (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008).