Monument and sculpture in public sphere, as "political and aesthetical signs"/"Siyasi/estetik gosterge" olarak kamusal alanda anit ve heykel

This article is about the place and significance of monuments and sculptures in the public sphere since the Early Republican Period until today. The relationship between these objects and the city are discussed; where, their transformation; the connection between monument, sculpture and political preferences of governments; as well as their function, meaning and content in the eyes of the artist and the public, are discussed. Together with the representative objectives it takes, sculpture has played an important role in relation to discussions of the problem of 'visibility' and 'representation' as from the perspective of "art regardless of the public" and "art in the public domain". This field comprises significant dynamics as regards the relationship it establishes with the medium of IT technologies, media and the internet, as well as those it establishes as per global and urban scales. From the perspective of daily practices, social, political and visual dimensions of the relationship sculpture has established with the public sphere and public place as an identified discipline have obviously changed by time. As one thinks about "art in the public sphere" in Turkey, primarily monuments and sculptures of Ataturk together with the Republican squares where they are seated come to mind. The project of creating a public domain, designed squares filled with monumental sculptures that were mostly financed by the state funds regularized in line with the ideological demands of the governments and local administrations played a major role. Parks and squares that were built within the framework of new urban ideal of the Early Republican Era were designed as the new public sphere. Art in the aforementioned domain meant "Gazi Sculptures" that were to be built everywhere, including even the smallest villages around Anatolia. As regards the embracement of the art of sculpture, the ideological need felt by the republican regime for monuments within the scope of modernization as a program played a significant role. The Movement for Monuments became an important element for the public visualisation and the adoption of principles signified by the six arrows of the Republican Peoples' Party. During 1933-1945, the period which includes the Second World War, the cultural formation that became a source for the art of monument/sculpture became a monumental tool for political propoganda in Turkey as in Europe and the Soviets. For Ataturk, image management had to start from point