This essay was originally published in issue 378 of Birikim magazine.
“…Our mosques, the seals we have placed upon our geography with the spirit of ‘One Nation, One Flag, One Homeland, One State,’ will continue to nourish our souls until the end of time. This work we have built on Çamlıca, one of Istanbul’s most beautiful hills, will, God willing, stand for centuries as a testament illuminating the path of our nation…”
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, President of Turkey, June 2018
(translation from the Turkish)
These words, inscribed on a marble plaque on the wall of the Büyük Çamlıca Mosque, emphasize, in Erdoğan’s own words, the mission of a new national identity assigned to the largest mosque ever built in Turkey.
Indeed, the Büyük Çamlıca Mosque is itself an assemblage of symbols. Its six minarets represent the six articles of faith; four of them rise to 107.1 metres in reference to the Battle of Manzikert in 1071. Its main dome reaches a height of 72 metres, supposedly representing the “72 nations living in Istanbul,” while its diameter of 34 metres refers to Istanbul’s vehicle registration code.
Whether a dome dimension determined by Istanbul’s license-plate number is compatible with sixteenth-century Ottoman architectural form is too political a question to be evaluated purely in architectural terms. Built on Çamlıca Hill, a protected natural area, so as to be visible from across Istanbul, the mosque symbolically reproduces the transmission of a legacy inherited from the ancestors into the future, while enlarging its dimensions in the process. (Tokdoğan, 2018)
Yet rather than surpassing the Ottoman architecture it emulates, the building imitates it through what has been described as a kind of “operative Islamist engineering.” (Sayın, 2018) Indeed, from its planning to its construction, the most heavily emphasized characteristics of the mosque have been its enormous scale and the techniques employed in its construction.
Just as, from the time of the earliest Ottoman sultans, the largest building constructed or converted in newly conquered territories was the mosque, both confirming the conquest and seeking to win hearts (Parlak, 2020), the Çamlıca Mosque can also be interpreted as a symbol of internal conquest within a struggle over the regime.
But can a project of such undeniable symbolic significance be understood solely as social expenditure intended to manufacture consent? (O’Connor, 1973) Can a public expenditure reported in the press to have cost approximately 100 million dollars simultaneously be regarded as a form of social investment contributing to capital accumulation?
Above all, spaces constructed to carry both everyday and ideological meanings remain subject to existing political-economic dynamics. (Batuman, 2019)
In the particular case of the Büyük Çamlıca Mosque, it is evident how useful expenditures of this kind can be in establishing hegemony over broad sections of society that receive little or no share from the prevailing model of accumulation, and may indeed be harmed by it.
At the same time, constructing such a highly symbolic structure on what had previously been a protected public site, and therefore land with no legally realizable exchange value, substantially increases the value of its surroundings.
Indeed, the construction of the Çamlıca Mosque repeats a familiar story of urban transformation, displacing an already existing congregation even at the cost of demolishing mosques previously built in the area. (Çavdar, 2020) In an area now being gentrified by Istanbul’s new landmark, it seems highly probable that existing residents will eventually be replaced by higher-income groups “through market mechanisms.”
Considering that the economic rent generated through state-led urban transformation has become one of the engines of Turkey’s construction economy, the relationship between the Büyük Çamlıca Mosque and capital accumulation becomes clearer. Indeed, urban renewal projects based on the concept of low-rise, historic Üsküdar houses are already underway in neighborhoods surrounding the mosque. (TOKİ Haber Dergisi, 2020)
Yet if we consider this enormous public space produced through political power solely in terms of its use value, the question of what it actually does, and does not, do also deserves attention.
Leaving aside its symbolic and political-economic motivations, Louis Sullivan’s principle that “form follows function”prompts a basic question: what is the primary function of this building?
Or, put differently, is it possible to attract people to such an ambitious structure, located well outside Istanbul’s main areas of urban settlement, simply because it is a place of worship?
The Arabic root jamʿ means “to gather,” while jāmiʿ, from which the Turkish word cami derives, means “that which gathers or brings together.” Whether the mosque can actually gather a congregation on the scale for which it was designed remains an open question. It was built to accommodate 63,000 worshippers simultaneously.
Upon entering the mosque, what first catches the eye is the almost unimaginable height of the dome for an enclosed space, together with the enormous chandelier suspended beneath it.
This combination virtually reduces the people visiting the mosque to insignificance. Visitors to a structure of such monumental proportions are perhaps intended to feel small, to experience a mixture of awe and fear before the building, and ultimately to submit to the worldly and spiritual grandeur it represents.
Reaching the uppermost level of the three-story mosque makes the amount of empty space generated by a building of this size even more apparent. On an ordinary weekend, it is almost impossible for visitors inside the mosque even to come into contact with one another.
If architecture is also the design of voids and empty spaces, it is difficult not to conclude that here the fetish of size has prevailed over architecture.
Unlike classical Ottoman mosques, the difference in elevation between the entrance and the courtyard prevents visitors from reaching the courtyard directly. As a result, solutions more commonly associated with shopping malls, including elevators and escalators, have been introduced.
Again, much as in a shopping mall, it is impossible to reach the courtyard without passing some of the spaces intended for shops, a library and other facilities, some of which were still under construction.
As a natural consequence of being designed to be visible from throughout Istanbul, the mosque commands a panoramic view of the Bosphorus. From its observation terrace, visitors can look out over an exceptional view of the city.
Because the mosque was built in a relatively sparsely populated part of Istanbul that is difficult to reach by the standards of the city, it seeks to offer visitors opportunities to spend time there rather than simply arriving to worship and leaving again. An art gallery, museum, library, conference hall and other functions are therefore intended to transform the complex into a living space outside prayer times.
The mosque’s outer courtyard and gardens have been designed as broad, marble-covered spaces where visitors can walk and enjoy the view. Except at times of extraordinary demand, these areas appear unlikely to be needed for worship. Consequently, the garden and outer courtyard are among the areas most frequently used by visitors for sightseeing.
Looking at the mosque’s interior spaces beyond those specifically intended for worship, comfort appears to have been given considerable importance. Elevators between the internal floors shorten distances that would require substantial effort to climb on foot, while seating in the foyer provides visitors with somewhere to rest after touring the mosque.
With a design reminiscent of a hotel, these spaces provide domestic and international visitors with sufficient facilities to perform their prayers and comfortably spend the remainder of the day there.
Returning, then, to the question posed at the outset, the Büyük Çamlıca Mosque reveals a clear relationship between the symbolism of the New Turkey and monumental scale, just as a relationship can be established between the facilities it provides and the number of visitors it seeks to attract.
Yet considered exclusively as a place of worship, the Büyük Çamlıca Mosque is, unfortunately, no more functional than the prayer room of an average shopping mall.
References
Batuman, B. (2019), Milletin Mimarisi. Istanbul: Metis Yayınları.
Çavdar, A. (2020), “Kutsal Hırsın Beton Gölgesi: Çamlıca Camii Neyin Anıtı?” In Otoriter Neoliberalizmin Gölgesinde: Kent, Mekan, İnsan, ed. Şerife Geniş. Ankara: Nika Yayınları.
O’Connor, J. (1973), The Fiscal Crisis of the State. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Parlak, D. (2020), Laikleşme Sürecinde Camiler. Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları.
Sayın, Z. (2018), Ölüm Terbiyesi. Istanbul: Metis Yayınları.
Tokdoğan, N. (2018), Yeni Osmanlıcılık. Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları.