Research Information System
Tükenmez B. (Executive), Sökülmez B. E.
Project Supported by Higher Education Institutions, University Supported Other Projects, 2021 - 2022
The study aims to examine and evaluate the micro-history, formation, and transformation processes of Papazın Bağı (Pastor's Vineyard), which is a piece of nature including a (qualified) nature protection area and commercial enterprise, since the beginning of the 20th century to present within the conceptual framework of 'urban nature.'
Papazın Bağı consists of a cafeteria, a restaurant, an abandoned building, and several temporary poultry houses on a 13221 square-meter former vineyard land with soft soil and small streams surrounded by apartment blocks in Ankara Gaziosmanpaşa neighborhood. According to oral history, the vineyard was claimed to be abandoned by a pastor and the place where the Topal Osman Incident occurred at the beginning of the 20th century. The vineyard and vineyard house, which collapsed in the 1990s, was purchased by the Kuloğlu family in 1923 and used seasonally for hunting and vintage purposes until 1935-1936. The Kuloğlu family, who altogether moved to the vineyard between 1935 and 1936 and continued to live there until the 1970s, transformed the place into a commercial enterprise in 1963 under the name of Pastor's Vineyard. Since the 1960s and 1970s, both the immediate surroundings of the land began to be urbanized and the land has been the subject of various zoning plans and project designs such as parks, hotels, and shopping centers that continue until today. The vineyard function of the land was abandoned entirely due to the Kuloğlu family leaving their vineyard house and moving to apartment life in parallel with urbanization in the 1970s. In the urbanization process that accelerated after 1980, the Pastor's Vineyard was declared an unsuitable land (for construction) in 1973 and a first-degree natural protected area in 1994. Pastor's Vineyard, whose first-degree natural protected area protection status was changed to 'Qualified Natural Protection Area' in 2017, has been preserved until today as a remnant of Ankara's vineyard culture.
Within the scope of the study, the time around the 1960s and 1970s, when the vineyard and vineyard house life was abandoned by the Kuloğlu family and the area gained the urban nature character through the reach of urbanization to the area, is taken as the turning point in the timeline. Thus, Pastor’s Vineyard’s microhistory is discussed in two phases, namely the vineyard and vineyard house in the first phase and urbanization and urban nature in the second phase. The factors, actors, and events and, accordingly, mutual interactions of culture, built environment, and nature that brought up the changes and transformations in the urban nature of Pastor’s Vineyard are explored in the different contexts of two phases. In this framework, the study discusses Pastor’s Vineyard as a multi-actored sample and laboratory as a piece of urban nature and tries to go beyond the conventional narratives that put nature in an opposite position against the city and human culture.
Keywords: Papazın Bağı, Pastor’s Vineyard, Urban Nature, Ankara Vineyard Culture, Urbanization