Conservation, renovation, restoring and urban regeneration activities have been carried out in the historic centre of Ankara, in Ankara Citadel since 2007 and right beside it, in Hamamönü both by local government and investors from the public sector and small-scale enterprises. Hamamarkası region has been the last episode of this process. These activities construct spaces for the consumption and demands of the tourists as well as urban travellers and create a new nostalgia culture based on the phenomenon of authenticity by means of aestheticisation practices. Local ties of belonging which weaken with modernization of globalization come to the fore again and become determining in the production and consumption phases of nostalgia culture. The aim of this study is to examine the formation of the nostalgia culture in these historic regions of Ankara and the diversities that have been produced within it by several actors. Based on the fieldwork comprising the enterprises like cafés, restaurants, antique shops, art galleries, art studios, boutique hotels in the regions, the study presents the repercussions of social memory, traditions, perceptions and longings of the past in the urban culture of Ankara. In the light of these data, it is seen that in these three regions different nostalgia cultures are formed and the emerging cultures are both influenced by neo-liberal globalization and the prevailing political dynamics in Turkey, particularly by the policy of neo-Ottomanism which has been effective in the last ten years.

In recent years, the historical centre of Ankara has undergone remarkable processes of restoration and renovation. New shops, cafés, restaurants, hotels and museums have been opened, while the city’s historic neighbourhoods are being (re)discovered by tourists and local residents alike. These new tourist sites are characterised by neo-Ottomanist cultural practices, neoliberal economic activities and Turco-Islamic connotations. The restoration and transformation of Ankara’s historic neighbourhoods constitutes a spatial embodiment of the ruling elite’s cultural politics. The representations of Ottoman heritage are intended to signify the ruling elite’s power, as well as a new notion of public memory. They are profoundly influenced by Turkish popular culture, and especially by popular TV series on different periods of Ottoman history. In this way, however, the authenticity of these new historic sites is implicitly called into question. Ankara’s new urban culture appears as the perfect example of restorative nostalgia, which Svetlana Boym has defined as a nostalgia that promises to rebuild a lost past and fill gaps in the popular memory with new constructions. This chapter is based on field research which investigates the (re)created nostalgia culture of Ankara’s historic Hamamönü and Hamamarkası neighbourhoods.

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