Come see Ankara, city of ultimate fakes

Can a city be defined by fakery? Here, I am not talking about politics, which could easily be added to the list when talking about “ultimate fakes.” I am talking about the reality, or hyper-reality. Driving in and around Ankara is to live inside a hyper-reality alla Turca.

It all started with fake clock towers – awkwardly placed, anachronistic structures. Then, we got the seemingly historical Gates of Ankara, by which time the entire city started looking like a weird theme park. Everything around us is solid, but we know it to be fake. Ankara is a make-believe city now, the scribble of an Anatolian schoolchild who grew up with off-color, Chinese-made Mickey Mouse toys.
Why am I saying that these are all ultimate examples of fakery? All in all, we now have around 55 clock towers in Ankara. Most modern cities lack any. Just look at London with the Big Ben. Prague has one to take selfies at. İzmir has one built by Abdulhamid II, back in 1901. Yet, Ankara boasts 55 electronic clock towers, one in every suitable corner, like in an overcrowded living room. Now that the jurisdiction of Ankara Metropolitan Municipality was extended to the boundaries of the entire province just before the last election, you can also see a fake clock tower in Beypazarı, a county of the province of Ankara. So fakery is really a disease spreading along the jurisdiction of the Ankara municipality. The gates of Ankara are everywhere, too. Their number has now reached 5, one at every entrance to the city. They all look sort of historical, yet we know they were built just a few months back, right before the March 30 municipal election. They are remnants of a historical wall surrounding the old city of Ankara that this simply did not exist.

Why is this...