Will the Hittite Sun Rise Again?
For many years, the symbol of Ankara, Turkey’s capital, was the Hittite sun and that of Istanbul was the tulip. Both have historic references. The Hittites built an empire in Anatolia four thousand years ago, with their capital not far from Ankara. They spoke an Indo-European language. Some Ottoman sultans were famous for their obsession with tulips, which were brought from Istanbul to Holland in the luggage of a Dutch ambassador to the Ottoman Empire.
The Hittite symbol represented the secular reforms of Turkey’s founder, Ataturk, because the history of the post-Ottoman republic, founded in 1923, was rewritten to skip over the Ottoman and preceding Byzantine empires all the way to the Hittites as the founding civilization of the new Turkish nation. The capital was moved from Istanbul to Ankara and the Hittites gave legitimacy to the new state as being truly (pre-Islamic) Anatolian, rather than heirs to the sprawling (Muslim) Ottoman Empire.
When in 1995 Ankara and Istanbul elected mayors from the Islam-inflected Welfare Party, the new mayors changed the city logos against quite a bit of popular protest (especially in Ankara). Both new logos incorporated elements of mosques. The fight is still going on through lawsuits. (click for article)
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