摘要: Description　　Beypazarı is a district of the capital city, Ankara, and located in Central Anatolia 98 km west of the capital. Beypazarı has been settled since ancient times, and holds symbols of ancien

Description

　　Beypazarı is a district of the capital city, Ankara, and located in Central Anatolia 98 km west of the capital. Beypazarı has been settled since ancient times, and holds symbols of ancient traditions with rich historical and natural resources. Though the district has been ruled by the Hittites, Phrygia, Galatia, Rome, Byzantine, Anatolia Seljuk, and Ottoman dynasties, it was an important trade center on the Silk Road connecting Istanbul and Baghdad during the Seljuk’s time and was also the center of government military during the Ottoman Empire.

　　İnözü Valley, situated at the north of Beypazarı, has a considerably rich landscape with natural vegetation and architectural sites. It hosts many human-made caves on the rocky slopes at two sides which had been in use since Roman times for the purposes of residence, churches and graves. It is also believed that these caves were cenotaphs and built-in rock churches dating back to the early Byzantine where religious ceremonies used to be held. Vineyards and fruit fields as well as the vineyard houses located at the bottom of the valley have come to the fore with the traditional vineyard life for the people of Beypazarı both in the past and today (Aklanoğlu, 2005).

　　The settlement was established on the slopes between the steep rocks due to its advantageous for defense, and it was spread towards the hills. The settlement has developed both in the lowlands suitable for agriculture and in the high protected areas. The fact that Beypazarı is rich in water resources including streams, groundwater and hot springs, together with the fertile land around made the site suitable for settling. Therefore, natural environmental conditions (climate, hydrology, geology, topography, soil properties), suitability for economic activities (enabling river tribes to irrigated agriculture) and population were all effective in shaping the settlement.

　　The very center of Beypazarı urban fabric is the 200-year-old bazaar, or the market. During the Ottoman era, shopping centers founded in Beypazarı, turned into a large market in which neighboring cities, towns and villages came together. The bazaar was one of the largest in that period. In fact, the name “Beypazarı” is a derivative of the word ‘bazaar’.

　　The Ottoman bazaars were built in areas where water supply would be easy or water was brought to the bazaar and manufacturing works that needed water were planned on the outer parts of the bazaar. Neighborhood structures are clustered around the bazaar and they were separated from it (Sahinalp and Gunal; 2012: 156 - 157) with complexes such as mosques, Turkish baths, coffeehouses which would form a buffer zone between the bazaar and the neighborhood.

　　The neighborhoods are connected to the main street and mosque by streets. There are no trees in the streets; house gardens are wooded. House architecture is not extroverted but inward (Kuban; 1978: 206). There are dead-ends in the neighborhood streets, which served as private roads from the main road of the neighborhood to the houses (Kuban; 1968: 69). The courtyards in the historical urban fabric consisting of two-three-storey houses, the squares formed at the intersection of the streets and in front of the mosques, the gardens along the İnözü Valley that divide the city center form the open and green area system in urban space where a hierarchy of courtyard-street-square exists.

　　In this order; there is a space organization that goes from private to public, reflecting the level of social activity. The houses with small gardens, which are entered from the road facade and which develop organically in compliance with the topographic structure formed by the adjacent houses, constitute the historical urban fabric. Among the wide organic streets are houses with large gardens. Narrow, curved and tree-free streets occasionally intersect to form small squares. In the urban fabric, where inner courtyards are generally closed to the outside, courtyard walls are constructed high to ensure privacy. The width of the roads varies between 3-6 meters and is limited by courtyard walls.

　　The very characteristics traditional Turkish houses have an exterior, interior and central plan scheme. The residences are generally 3-storey building. The ground floors are made of stone, and the upper floors are made of stone or mud-brick filling system. While the ground floors are different due to their stony floor function, the 1st and 2nd floors are the main living floors which are more carefully and almost identically designed. The residences with exterior sofas consist of a series of rooms with a sofa in front. The stairs are sometimes in the middle of these rooms and sometimes in the sofas. A room facing the garden or the road appears to have climbed to the front. The medium-sized type sofa is surrounded by rooms and service areas and the rooms are located in the corners. Rooms with internal sofas are located on either side of the sofas, but the service areas are sometimes not on this floor. Stairs are in the hall or between rooms (Aksulu, 2005; Aklanoglu, 2010).

　　“Gusgana”, which is a special section encountered in certain houses with gardens, is built by rising the upper floor and protruding from the roof. This section was developed as a local response for fires to be used for purposes of storing valuable belongings. 

　　The material of the walls facing north and having a hearth is adobe. Partition walls are usually built in Baghdadi technique. Different types of bay windows increase the connection of housing with outdoor space (Özmen, 1987, Aklanoğlu, 2010).

　　“Sweet Plaster”, which is found only in Beypazarı Houses in Anatolia, was used on the interior and exterior surfaces of all wooden frameless and adobe walls of Beypazarı traditional houses. The binder raw material of the plaster is obtained from the quarries in the Beypazarı region and processed only in the Tekke Village of the Beypazarı District, making it usable for plastering. It is then mixed in place by the local plaster masters and applied as coarse and fine plaster in the buildings. It is important to apply this plaster directly to wood wall fill and adobe surfaces in such a way that it can enter between wood and adobe. Thus, the plaster, whose thickness varies between 3 and 10 cm, is adhered to the surfaces. 0.5 cm of this is thin plaster and no coating is applied on it. This plaster is also called “Tekke Lime” (Urak and Çelebi, 2005).

　　In addition to its traditional style of housing and the Ottoman architectural patterns, all the characters of Turkish culture are still alive in Beypazarı, craftsmen still carrying out their professions in the bazaars as well as the local cuisines which date back to some 600 years.