International Congress of Aesthetics 2007 “Aesthetics Bridging Cultures” Towards a Critical Construal of City and Nature: A Brief Environmental History,

Scholarly endeavors on environmental history and theory should be examined relationally in order to understand how nature positions itself and in what unique ways it is perceived in the surrounding political contexts of institutional and everyday life. Therefore, what is needed here is not an inquiry into the genesis of nature itself, but critical answers to those questions of how and to what extent the idea of nature is effective at institutional level and in everyday life, and more importantly, how nature should be studied through the elements of politics as a field of everyday practices, performances, images, and appearances. For us, nature is an ideological construction, maintains its position in relation to social forces and importantly sustains its political power in space. This brief article then questions the city of Ankara to problematize such intricate issues on nature and spatial practices as part of Turkey’s modernization project. Attitudes towards nature has long been an important component of institutionalized politics; for the state elite, taming the nature was regarded as part of republican ideology and that ideology must have also been reflected in urbanization, becoming a common ground to frame the norms and standards of public life. For this reason, the new Turkish nation i