After the Gezi Park incident, Istanbul Mayor Kadir Topbaş said, “I won’t even change the location of a bus stop without asking the people.” I think he was right.

Have you seen the new clock towers in Ankara? Normally, a city has a single historical clock tower. Big Ben in Westminister, London, for instance, was built in the 1850s. If you think Turkey and England cannot be compared, consider the Izmir Clock Tower. It was built in 1901 to commemorate the 25^th anniversary of Abdul Hamid II's accession to the throne. It is literally historical. These are genuine buildings with historical significance. Ankara, however, has one clock tower on almost each street nowadays. When I look at them, I see plastic-like things in awkward shapes and colors. They look like fake historical clock towers. I can deal with the fact that someone actually produced these tasteless things, but what it is with placing them all around Ankara? Do we have to assent to these horrendous things once we cast our votes in local elections? Don’t we have the right to ask for no services? Can’t we say to the local administration, “Do you know what I want? I want you not to do anything.”?

I have been talking about these horrible things since the first time I saw one. To begin with, I want to stress one point about historical clock towers: They look like they are the remnants of days gone by. When you see one, you want to take a second look. They catch your eye. The fake ones in Ankara, however, are really disastrous and they are everywhere. We are talking about mass-produced, plastic towers of the age of mechanization.

The second point is that I have hard time understanding the point in placing fake clock towers all around a city. It is obviously not so that passers-by can learn the time. Mass clock production began in the late eighteenth century. The first wall clock I ever saw was at my grandfather’s house. It had been made in Russia for the Ottoman Empire in the late nineteenth century. The use of clocks was democratized in the 1950s with electronic clocks and watches. Since then, almost everyone owns a watch. Before the 1950, having a historical clock tower in the city had a meaning. Could you please tell me what the point is today?

Turkey’s population is 74 million. As of 2013, there were 68 million GSM subscribers. Almost everyone has a mobile phone today in Turkey, meaning that almost everyone has a clock. So, could you please tell me, what is the service the municipality provides by placing fake, ugly clock towers everywhere? According to the figures on the Electronic Public Procurements Platform, the total cost of the 34 towers to the people of Ankara is 5.8 million liras. The tender had only one bidder. The cost of one clock tower is about 170,000 liras. If the Court of Accounts was in the condition to audit municipalities, this tender would be a good thing to investigate. Let me note this down for later.

The third point is related directly to participatory urban governance. Should elected authorities have the right to take decisions big enough to change the appearance of a city without asking its residents? I think they should not.  The opinion of the people who are going to benefit from the service, the residents of the neighborhood where the towers are going to be put, for example, should be asked. Do they really want those fake monuments in front of their homes? Do they want shopping malls? Do they want the artillery barracks complex or to keep the park? Do they want the third bridge? I think all issues of this kind must be raised for public opinion. After the Gezi Park incident, Istanbul Mayor Kadir Topbaş said, “I won’t even change the location of a bus stop without asking the people.” I think he was right.

I think Turkey has to learn to decide local issues via local participation.

This commentary was published in Radikal daily on 24.01.2014