ABSTRACT
Declared the capital city of the Republic of Turkey, the increase in the population of Ankara during the 1920s created settlement problems and necessitated the construction of new housing. This defined its spatial transformation, accompanied by the social transformation in relation to the identities of the increasing number of inhabitants. The population movements provided social unification by resulting in the majority of the Turkish-Muslim population in the city, while social stratification, as reflected in settlement patterns, became unavoidable as the newcomer bureaucrats and civil servants became the new ‘majority’ of the population. The chapter aims to understand how the increasing population was housed as the spatial context of Ankara changed with the transformation of the ‘old city’ and the formation of the ‘new city’, and how the city was hence inhabited by the changing population as determined by the social context of relations between the ‘natives’ and the ‘newcomers’.
