A Spatial Analysis of Gaziantep Railway and Its Station Throughout History

The invention and proliferation of railways around the world emerged from the need for transport networks that would facilitate the movement of industrial goods produced during the Industrial Revolution. They were introduced to the Anatolian region in the late–Ottoman period and gained importance as an indispensable part of the internal market in a new nation-state, the Republic of Turkey. Thanks to its location on the Silk Road, Gaziantep city in the southeastern part of Turkey, has always been a particularly important node on commercial routes. The present study describes the introduction of railways to Gaziantep province and the effects of Gaziantep Railway Station on the city at an urban and structural scale. Although the first city plan was the Barsumyan–Nazaryan Plan (1920s), the railway system was introduced as a design object to Gaziantep City in the Jansen Plan (1938) and followed by the Aru–Söylemezoğlu Plan (1950), Gaziantep Plan (1973), and Oğuz Aldan Plan (1990). It can be concluded that its late introduction to Gaziantep delayed its integration with the transportation network covering other Anatolian cities at an urban and spatial level from an urban design perspective.