ABSTRACT
Framed by international geopolitics as well as Turkey’s own national development agendas after World War II, this chapter explores the pioneering role of the TUSAN tourism initiative in the country’s infrastructural, architectural, and social modernization. Following the extensive highway building programs of the 1950s, the chain hotels/motels of TUSAN were integrated with this transport infrastructure in the 1960s, while their trademark architecture effectively localized the international modernist aesthetic of leisure tourism. This chapter discusses the TUSAN story in relation to geopolitical, economic, and socio-cultural dynamics in postwar Mediterranean, as well as major developments in Turkey such as the promotion of mass-tourism, democratization of travel through motorization, changing patterns of vacationing, and new conceptions of leisure coveted by middle classes. This chapter argues that, conceived in response to these new needs and aspirations, TUSAN hotels/motels did not just reflect them, but were themselves active agents giving visual expression to the conceptualization of modernity in this emerging postwar society.
