The professionalization of the Ottoman-Turkish architect

In the Ottoman Empire, the architectural profession underwent a series of institutional transformations after the end of the eighteenth century. Those were mostly realized as part of the political and cultural project of westernization--a policy that the ruling elite adopted to encounter the growing military and economic power of western European countries.; The Office of Royal Architects, which had been the major educational and bureaucratic institution since the fifteenth century, was abolished in 1831. New educational curricula for architects were first organized under the engineering schools, then in the Royal School of Fine Arts, all of which were based on French models. These institutional changes introduced a new professional vocabulary to Ottoman architects, based on the western concept of architecture as art. Although tensions between westernist and nationalist ideologies constantly stirred the architectural circles after the mid-nineteenth century, they ultimately reinforced the westernist tendencies rather than challenging it.; Ottoman-muslim architects remained as passive agents of change until 1909, when the first professional association, Ottoman Society of Engineers and Architects, was founded under the leadership of architect Kemalettin Bey. Nationalistic ideals rather than economic concerns dominated the professional discourse until the late 1920s, when Turkish architects began to recognize collective concerns to form a distinct professional community.; Throughout the Ottoman period and the first half of the present century, however, their professional ideals always paralleled contemporary political ideologies, as the state remained the primary source of architectural patronage.; Besides royal patrons, a group of cultured middle-class elite developed a relatively autonomous building market in Istanbul during the nineteenth century. This involved foreign and non-muslim patrons and architects who benefitted from new land-ownership rights in the empire, and economic advantages provided by trade treatises. These architects pioneered the foundation of private offices. Ottoman muslim architects, on the other hand, had to wait until the 1920s, to gain recognition as individual experts through private practice. Only then was the traditional identity of the Ottoman architects totally eradicated. One crucial element remained absent from the whole process of professional transformations--a critique of the process itself.