Tarihsel Kent Mekanında Süreklilik Ve Kopukluk Öğeleri : Sultanahmet Meydanı Çevresinde Ve Sur İçi Galata Bölgesinde Analitik İnceleme

Abstract

Bu çalışmada, tarihsel kent mekanı bütününde süreklilik ve kopukluk öğeleri, Sultanahmet Meydanı çevresi ve sur içi Galata bölgesinde analitik incelenmiştir. Bizans döneminden başlayarak, Osmanlı'ya ve günümüze değin Sultanahmet Meydanı çevresi, sur içi Galata bölgesi ve kent bütünündeki mekansal örgütlenme ve oluşum, şehir dokusunun yangınlar etkisiyle geçirdiği strüktürel değişim, farklı zaman dilimleri içerisinde (yüzyıllar) bir bütün olarak değerlendirilerek, surları (sınırları), anıtsal yapıları, oluşan aksları ve süregelen mekansal bölgeleriyle (ticaret, konut, depolama, saray, liman bölgeleri, vs.) tanımlanmıştır. Karşılaştırmalı analitik inceleme bölümünde ise dönemler arası süreklilik ve kopukluk öğeleri tanımlanarak tez bütünündeki mantık dile getirilmiştir.

Preliminary excavations done in the 1950's in the Eminönü district of Istanbul show that the first settlements in the Istanbul peninsula date from the late third or earlysecond millenium B.C. This research has not been pursued, and data on the early settlements is very sparse. The first Megarian colony was established at the western end of the peninsula during the mid-seventh century B.C. There were two other Megarian colonies-one in Chalcedon (Kadıköy) on the Asiatic side of the Bosporus and one in Galata. The fortifications of the Megarian city on the Istanbul peninsula encircled a rather small area corresponding to the first of the seven hills. Its harbor lay just beyond the walls on the Golden Horn. The Strategion in the city's center and the Thrakion, possibly in the proximity of today's Hagia Sophia Square, were the two main open spaces nd were used for public and military functions. At the peninsula's highes point, where the Topkapi Palace is today, was the Acropolis, center of the colony. There stood the temples to Zeus, Apollo, Poseidon, Aphrodite, and Athena Ecbasia. Theaters and baths, a gymnasium, and a stadium constituted the major public monuments. In A.D. 330 when Constantine moved the seat of the Roman Empire from Rome to Byzantium, he turned his back to the old capital and created a new state. Constantine named his new capitol Constantinople, The city of Constantine. The main features of the Severan city, namely, the Hipodrome, the basic layout of Constantine's capital. A new set of fortifications were built that incorporated the third and the fourth hills, thereby quadrupling the size of the Greco-Roman city. Except for the terminal points of the fortifications, which correspond to today's Unkapam on the Golden Horn and Etyemez on the Marmara shore, their exact location is unknown. During the next centuries, new harbors were built on the Marmara shore within the boundaries of Constantine's walls. The best protected harbor was still the Bosporion at the entrance to the Golden Horn. The Golden Horn shore developed as a series of commercial quays-a pattern that would flourish vli during the Ottoman period. The walls along the Sea of Marmara were also begun by Constantine, but rebuilt by Arcadius (395-408)after a big earthquake. The mese, the main porticoed avenue, was the extension of Septimus Severus's embolos that initially led from Tetraston to the main gate of the Severan walls. Here, Constantine built under his name an elliptical forum, which had no formal precedents among its counterparts in Rome. From Constantine's Forum, the mese continued toward the west and, after passing the site of today's Beyazit Square, bifurcated. Constantine duplicated the.urban administiration of Rome by establishing four regions. Septimus Severus's Tetraston, renamed the Augusteon, The Forum of Augustus, was enlarged and embellished by Constantine. Constantine also completed the work of the preceding rulers. In Roman tradition, a circus was not only considered an essential part of any imperial residence, but it was also the place were the emperor met his subjects. The first structures of what was become the Great Palace were built by Constantine next to the Hipodrome. Enlarged and embellished by succeeding emperors, in Justinian's time (527-65) the Great Palace covered approximately half of the area between Hagia Sophia and what would later become the Sultan Ahmet Mosque. In the east, it extended as far as the walls of the present day Topkapi Palace and in the west to the Çatladıkapı Gate. Constantine provided for the building of great churches. His two important edifices, the original Church of Hagia Sophia and the Church of the Holy Apostles. The city continued to expand after Constantine. During the early decades of the fourth century, many mansions and middle-class dwellings were built inthe suburbs otside Constantine's walls. This spurt of building activity led to the construction of another set of walls under Theodosius II (408-50). The Thedosian fortifications, formed by three parallel walls, were built at a distance of about one kilometer west of Constantine's walls, thereby taking in the fifth, sixth, and seventh hills. Across the Golden Horn, Galata had a poryicoed avenue parallel to the shore, which later became the principal artery of the thirteenth century Genoese settlement. In the fifth century, Galata had all the typical monuments of a late Roman city: church, theater, baths, and harbor. In the late sixth century, Tiberius II (578-82) built a tower called Galatou on the quay. By the fifth century, the capital had acquired three principal forums along the mese in addition to the Augusteon and the Forum of Constantine: the Forum Tauri, the Forum Bovis, and the Forum of Arcadius. The mese started at the Augusteon and continued to the Forum of Constantine, where it led to the Forum Tauri. To the west of the Forum Tauri, the mese branched: the first xm branch led to the southwest and, passing through the Forum Bovis (today's Aksaray) and Forum of Arcadius, it finally reached the Golden Gate. The second branch ended at the Gate of Adrianople. By the fifth century, the growth of the city necessitated a solution to the problem of providing water to the residents. Already in 368 an aqueduct had been constructed by Emperor Valens (364-78) to bring water to the heart of the city. During the reign of Theodosius II (408-50), four out of the seven hills of Constantinople had gained some monumental definition. On the first hill stood the Augusteon, the Hipodrome, and the original Church of Hagia Sophia; on the second, Constantine's Forum with the column in the middle; on the third, the Forum of Theodosius; and on the fourth, the Church of the Holy Apostles. Even though these structures determined the foci for future developments, their monumentality showed different characteristics from the Ottoman complexes that woud replace them beginning in the fiftheenth century. In contrast to the Ottoman monumentality, which defined an urban image punctuated by vertical elements such as domes and minarets, the early Byzantine city was not as concerned with an overall silhouette. Jews were the largest minorities. Muslim neighborhood located on the eastern part of the peninsula. Unlike the other minorities, Jews were not permitted to live within the city limits and were relegated to a quarter in Galata, across the Golden Horn. Although the Jews were the long-term residents of Galata, under Manuel I Commenus (1 143-80), Genoese merchants obtained a concession to settle in Galata in addition to their original enclave on the other side of the Golden Horn. As a result, Galata developed as a Genoese colony during the last centuries of Byzantine Empire. In 1303, the boundaries of the colony were established, but not permit was issued for the construction of a surrounding wall. One year later, benefiting from the new building regulation that abolished height limits, they built tall, castlelike structures along the ditch. In 1316, the first part of the fortification was constructed and in 1349, the northern part and the Galata Tower were completed. Later in 1387 and 1397, as the colony expanded toward the northwest, the newly acquired zones were enclosed and, finally, the eastern slope of the hill leading down to the Bosporus was surrounded by a wall. In 1453, Mehmet II made his ceremonial entry into Constantinople and, declaring it to be his capital, inaugurated a new era of building activity aimed at making the city the economic, administrative, cultural, and religious center of his empire. Mehmet II's first major tasks were to repair of the Theodosian walls. The flmdemental goal in the development of Istanbul after the conquest was to create a Muslim city in which the communities could live in accordance with the philosophy of Islam. Muslim nighborhoods grew around religious complexes. The definitive change in the street fabric of the Byzantine city must have begun during Mehmet II's reign. The back streets of Constantinople formed an irregular and very dense pattern. However, there were large main arteries that connected the great public squares. As the fiftheenth century city developed around self contained nahiyes and their subunits, mahalles, each originating from a central node, the importance of large public open spaces and wide avenues diminished. But, the Byzantine structure did not disintigrate immediately. In creating a Muslim city, Mehmet II made his largest investments in religious buildings. The process started with the conversion of Hagia Sophia into a mosque and was followed by the conversion of seventeen other churches. Mehmet II built a türbe for Ebu Eyüp El Ensari in Eyüp outside the walls on the Golden Horn; this site soon became a Muslim shrine. The city was also filled with many new mosques. The külliye of Mehmet II on the fourth hill, on the site of the Church of the Holy Apostles, was a symbolic gesture that firmly established the Ottoman legacy: Emperor Constantine's church was replaced by the mosque of the new conqueror, Mehmet II. Located in a relatively less populated area on the road leading to the Edirne Gate, this külliye acted as a magnet around which Muslim neighborhoods developed. Mehmet II's complex was the first in a series of imperial külliyes that gave a distinct monumental character to the skyline of Ottoman Istanbul. Istanbul's population grew fast from 1477 to 1535. This rapid increase resulted in higher population densities in the Istanbul peninsula, as well as in the emergence of the new Muslim neighborhoods of Tophane, Fındıklı, Cihangir, and Kasımpaşa on the northern side of the Golden Horn. The sixteenth century was a time of great building activity. The külliyes break up the irregular fabric of the city by their geometric and axial schemes. They are integral units organized around a central structure and have no major arteries connecting them to surrounding environment. The image of Istanbul as the center of Ottoman civilization developed during this time. The wealth of the empire made large investments possible and an extensive building program was undertaken. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Istanbul continued to develop along the same lines it had in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. However, the scale of the building activity was by no means comparable to that of previous centuries, due largely to the gradual decline in the economic power of the empire. The population continued to escalate. Not only Istanbul's population increase, but the sixteenth century settlements of Kasımpaşa and Tophane on the northern side of the Golden Horn grew considerably. The seventeenth century contributed two monuments to the capital: the külliye of Ahmet I (1616) on the site of the Byzantine Palace to the west of Hipodrome and the Valide Mosque (1597-1663)on the waterfront in Eminönü. The eighteenth century brougth no significant monuments to Istanbul, but nonethless marked an important first step toward embracing European arhitectural fashions. Among the most striking examples of the Ottoman Baroque are the Nuruosmaniye Mosque on the second hill and the Laleli Mosque near Aksaray. Until this period, Istanbul's monuments were characterized by their rectangular outlines and plain sufaces. While the Istanbul peninsula did not experience any dramatic changes from the early seventeenth century to the 1 840's, this period was a time of growth for Galata. Under Ottoman rule, Galata survived as a cosmopolitan harbor town, but its built fabric presented characteristics different from Istanbul. The pattern was quite different outside the Galata walls. Up to the eighteenth century, Pera was covered with orchards and vineyards. In the seventeenth century, a number of wealthy Europeans, including the French, English, Venetian, Dutch, and Genoese ambassadors, and other local Christians, built their ample residences and gardens there. Pera hence began to develop as an upper-class residential quarter, in contrast to the commercial Galata. During the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Pera's physical structure evolved as a European quarter. But, the real building boom in Pera occurred after 1838. From 1838 to 1908, the Ottoman Empire underwent an intense phase of economic and sociopolitical transformation aimed at the modernization of the old system. After 1839, the post-Tanzimat Ottoman reformers agreed that their capitol had three major problems: it had an irregular street fabric, it was divided, and it was dilapidated. These problems were in sharp contrast to contemporary cities in Europe, which symbolized progress and refind culture to the Westward-looking Ottoman bureaucrats. In accordance with the general struggle to save the empire through European-style reforms, Istanbul had to be modernized along Western lines. The reformers agreed that modernization could be achieved by imposing a regular order on the urban fabric, by providing good communication between different parts of the capital, and by improving the urban appereance. xvi The solutions to the three problems went hand-in hand. Regularization ment replacing the old street network, composed of short, crooked arteries and many dead ends, with well connected roads-straight, spacious, and uniform width. Also new building codes and regulation were passed that aimed at creating a uniform residental fabric. Regularization involved, at the same time, clearing the water front of dilapidated buildings and opening wide embankments. These efforts helped to improve access to the major nodes of the capital. The introduction of modern transportation systems further enhanced accessibility. Trams, running along the newly opened or enlarged arteries, connected the scattered the neighborhoods of Istanbul and Galata. The construction of two bridges across the Golden Horn facilitated communication between the two banks of the waterway. It was, however, by the ferryboats of the Şirket-i Hayriye that the physically divided parts of the capital-Istanbul, Galata, Üsküdar, and the Bosporus villages-were finally linked to each other. The wide, new enbankments made water tranportation easier. Improving the capital's urban image was the concluding order of business. The models most admired were the European capitals. The ultimate step toward creating a capital that woud compete with, and even surpass, the beauty of European cities three ambitious urban design schemes were drafted for Istanbul. Their aims were modernization of the communication network and creation of an urban image based on European technology and cultural values. The first scheme Helmuth Von Moltke's plan of 1 839, completed under Abdülmecit, followed on the heels of the Tanzimat fervor. The other two, those of F. Arnodin and J. A. Bouvard, were purposed during Abdülhamit II.'s reign. And, as typical of many other projects of the era, they were ambitious schemes that were never actually implemented. Both plans hoped to embody the past power of the empire and to express that power symbolically in grand - scale rebuilding schemes for the capital. Moltke's main goal was to provide an uninterrupted communication network throughout the Istanbul peninsula by the creation of wide arteries connecting the heart of the city- the administrative and commercial regions- to the old Byzantine gates. At the same time, the residental architecture gradually woud be converted from wood to kargir for fire protection. His scheme attempted to correct some of the city's physical problems, the solitions to which have been the goal of all subsequent schemes up to the present day. Also in his plan a strong concern with image: Istanbul was to be converted into a European city in keeping with the Tanzimat philosophy. The redesigning and rebuilding done between 1838 and 1908 perhaps did not match the ambitious goals of the rulers, but nonethless some longlasting changes were introduced into the urban fabric. The most intensive building activity took place from the late 1850s to 1870s under the supervision of the İ.T.K. (İslahat-ı Turuk Komisyonu) in Istanbul and The Sixth District Administration in Galata. Between 1858 and 1870, the Sixth District assumed all replanning activities, which are regularization of streets, paving, construction of water and sewage lines, in Galata. The opening of Karaköy Square in 1858 marked the begining of a new and intensive phase of activity in the district. To facilitate communication in the dense of Galata, the city walls (excluding the tower) were demolished in 1863, and, following the nineteenth- century European practice, the area gained was used to open new streets and widen the existing ones. After demolition was completed in 1865, the Sixth District Administration oversaw a number of new construction projects. In the west, Galata Yenikapı Caddesi and Şişhane Sokak, in the north, Büyük Hendek Sokak, and in the east, Boğazkesen Caddesi were built on the wall line. The other two streets that underwent enlargement and regularizition during these years were Yorgancılar from Karaköy to Azapkapi at the foot of the Old Bridge, and Galata Caddesi from Karaköy to Tophane. Different forces determined the scope and nature of activity on the two sides of the Golden Horn. The dense, wooden residential fabric of the Istanbul peninsula made the area vulnerable to fires. Here, the burned-out neighborhoods became arenas of experimentation where Western-inspired urban planning principles were put into practice. In Galata, however, fires played a secondary role that was limited to the older and denser neighborhoods. It was the popularity the suburb acquired after the 1 840s and the subsequent physical expansion that dictated the location and scale of new urban planning practices in Galata. Major fires played the greatest role in the transformation of the urban fabric. The 1856 Aksaray fire and the 1865 Hocapaşa fire were especially important in the reshaping of the Istanbul peninsula. After 1865 Hocapaşa fire, under the responsibility of İ.T.K., Divanyolu, one of the main arteries, was enlarged. The buildings at the northern edge of the Hipodrome were demolished,creating a more conspicuous meeting point between the Divanyolu and the Hipodrome. Because of the large-scale fires and the higher densities, the regularization efforts changed the urban fabric more noticeably in the Istanbul peninsula than on the northern side of the Golden Horn. A number of previously mazelike neighborhoods in Istanbul acquired regular layouts, but their scale did not alter dramatically, and their communication with other parts of the city did not necessarily improve. CVlll Also the communication network in the commercial and administrative core of Istanbul improved significantly. Connection of the Eminönü quay via the commercial zones to Beyazit and the Divanyolu was achieved by the tramline. Beyazit was also linked to the Marmara shore, and the widened Divanyolu was given a new monumentality. In fact, with the area cleared around Constantine's Column, the punctuated entrance to the Hipodrome, and the newly opened Hagia Sophia Square, this artery now regained some of the glory that it had once possessed as the mese of the Byzantine Constantinople. The change in the street layout and the fabric did not affect Istanbul's urban image significantly. The lifestyle in the Istanbul peninsula maintained older patterns, whereas residents of Galata now tried to imitate the lifestyles in European cities. Hence, the symbols of modern living-office buildings, banks, theaters, hotels, department stores, and multistory apartment buildings-were abundant in Galata. These buildings, in contrast to Istanbul's Ottoman monuments, with their domes and minarets against a down-played residential fabric, gave the old Genoese suburb a strikingly different and definetly more nineteenth-century European appearance. The post-Tanzimat practice of appealing to Western expertise was pursued also under the Republic and many European specialists were invited to modernize the Turkish cities. Prost's, one of the specialists, presence in Istanbul spanned the years from 1936 to 1951. The record increase in the city's population beginning in the 1950s contributed yet another major planning issue to the already existing ones. According to the Prost Plan,during the period of Municipality President Lütfi Kırdar, Azapkapı-Tepebaşı connection, the Atatürk Boulvard's extention starting from Yenikapi, was planned to enlarge the transportation network. New streets and public squares, Taksim and Eminönü, were also planned. Almost no more dead-end streets were left. The graetest part of the Istanbul peninsula and Galata was almost regularized. However, the Prost Plan remained as as inadaquate plan for the growing city, Istanbul. After the railway passing through Sarayburnu, the region lost the entirety of the palace, the walls, and the shore. And after Menderes filling up the shore line, because of his political aims, the district lost its major entirety. Demolishing of the buildings, for Azapkapı-Karaköy connection, was the reason of Galata loosing its entirety. Istanbul and Galata still present different images: Istanbul's skyline is dominated by the domes and minarets of the külliyes and mosques, whereas the Western look of the Galata side has become even more pronounced with the costruction of several buildings over twenty stories high. The walled section of Galata; with its tower, continuous central arteries, monumental buildings, architectural spaces, and with its' changed social structure, and around the Sultanahmet Square; with its' ordinarily built twentieth-century buildings, touristic area identity, monumental buildings, and with its' historical settlement area identitiy, take their place in today's city.