My favorite place in Ankara has always been Kavaklıdere. Well-dressed men and women sip coffee in neatly packed cafes, speaking in low tones, glancing at each other with the knowing look of those who orbit the same small world. Politics, academia, business, everyone is a familiar face, or at least connected by two handshakes. The neighborhood hums with the soft tension of a city that is less a metropolis than a capital – measured, cautious and self-contained.
Sometimes, amid the clinking of porcelain cups, a senior politician appears. To the untrained eye, he or she could be just another official in a modest suit, briefcase in hand. But to those who know, it is like spotting an exotic bird. The glamour of Istanbul belongs to celebrities and financiers. Ankara’s stars are undersecretaries, committee chairs, senior advisers – the people who shift budgets and borders without ever appearing on television. To recognize them is to signal that you belong inside the bubble.
And then there is the uncanny feeling that comes with life in this city: your name recognized by someone for some unknown reason. A handshake, a nod, a sudden glance of familiarity. You are not famous, not even notable. Yet within Ankara’s corridors, you find yourself a lesser celebrity on some off-Broadway stage – noticed, evaluated and remembered for a role you didn’t know you played. In this bubble, reputation circulates faster than faces.
The chill of Kavaklıdere is the complete opposite of the 7 a.m. flight from Istanbul to Ankara, filled with corporate types who quite obviously do not wear formal attire on a daily basis. Their jackets are stiff, their ties an afterthought, their faces betraying both ambition and discomfort. For them, Ankara is not home but a necessary audience: a city where presentations are made, hands are shaken, and signatures are chased before the return flight in the evening.
But Kavaklıdere belongs to those who linger. To those who sip their coffee slowly, who already know the names and the networks, who do not need to perform the rituals of power because they live within them. Ankara rewards patience, not spectacle.
It is often said that money is made in Istanbul but distributed in Ankara. Istanbul dazzles with its skyscrapers, its banks and ports, its noise of speculation and commerce. Ankara, by contrast, is the city of signatures, stamps and quiet phone calls that decide where those billions will flow. Contracts, tenders, budgets; all pass through this grey filter of bureaucracy. Without Ankara’s approval, Istanbul’s wealth remains only potential.
That is why Kavaklıdere cafes feel less like coffee shops than antechambers. Every conversation carries the weight of possibility: a small contract here, a committee decision there, a policy shift whispered in advance. The glances exchanged across tables are as transactional as they are social. Ankara does not need grandeur; it has consequence.
The geography of the city reinforces this logic. The climb up Cinnah Avenue and the glide down Protocol Road are not just commutes – they are rituals of hierarchy. Broad boulevards lined with embassies and ministries remind you that this is where sovereignty resides, even if the skyline is modest. Then there is the bottle-shaped Sheraton, that odd silhouette on the horizon. From its upper floors, you can see what Ankara really is: sprawling, concrete and utilitarian. Grey upon grey, like a monochrome painting. Yet that view reveals a paradox. The city may lack beauty, but it never lacks importance.
Ankara is also a city of memory. Walk long enough through its avenues and you sense the presence of the inimitable great men and women of the Republic. And above all, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk – the founder father figure that one rebels against and eventually comes to appreciate. His name is carved into the city as surely as his mausoleum crowns it. His gaze still lingers in meeting rooms and classrooms, in portraits that watch silently over decisions large and small.
When one visits Anıtkabir, one cannot help but take stock of it all; the improbable struggle, the stubborn resilience, the boldness of building a capital in the middle of the steppe. In a way, they were our greatest generation: men and women who carried the republic on their shoulders, who endured its hardships and etched its principles into stone and memory. To stand there is to feel both the fragility and the permanence of the republic. It reminds you that this gray city was not designed to charm, but to endure.
Ankara is, undeniably, a bubble. It is a city that talks mostly to itself, where the gossip is about memos, decrees and commissions. Where an entire café can fall silent if an unexpected resignation is announced, and where acronyms, RTÜK (The Turkish Broadcasting Authority), YÖK (The Higher Education Council), DPT (The State Planning Organization), are part of casual conversation. Outsiders call it dull. Insiders know that dullness is the point. This is a city that thrives not on spectacle, but on procedure.
And yet, there is an elegance in its understatement. Istanbul flaunts its wealth; Izmir offers its charm. Ankara disciplines. It steadies the national rhythm with its grayness, its predictability. To live here is to learn the difference between show and substance, between glamor and gravity. The absence of distraction becomes its own form of honesty.
I passionately love that city. Like an old lover, perhaps. A relationship built not on fireworks but on a steady, insistent rhythm. Its grayness reminds me of a bygone time, a formative intimacy with place and purpose. And, like an old relationship, I choose to remember the good things in retrospect: the long climb up Cinnah like a slow embrace, the quiet rituals of Kavaklıdere cafes, the Sheraton standing like a bottle on the horizon, half-awkward and half-familiar.
Ankara is a bubble, yes, but it is also a mirror. To love it is to accept its flaws, to find beauty in its understatement, and to yield to the discipline of its grayness. Not a rhapsody, not a carnival, not a sea breeze, but a rhapsody in gray: measured, insistent and unforgettable.
