TURKEY'S NEW CAPITAL.

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXI, Issue 2260, 20 April 1926, Page 2

TURKEY'S NEW CAPITAL.

CITY WITHOUT SEWERS

ZEAL WITHOUT SYSTEM. Truly Asiatic luiplmzardness would appear to be th© rule in the building of Turkey's new capital at Angora it' one is to judge from a recent description by Air Maurice Pernot in the London Daily Chronicle. j'n writing from Persia a mouth or two- ago, I said that what that country cliiejily lacked was confidence, (says Mr Peniot). To-day the Turks liavc such confidence in themselves and in their leaders that the very atwosj)hore which one breathes in Angora is, so to speak, impregnated with that sentiment. Turkish, thoughts seem to he dominated by two axioms, first Unit to the Ghazi (Kernel Pasha, the president) nothing is impossible, and secondly that whatever the Ghazi does is well done. This cold, even a little passive people .submits to the new discipline with something resembling a joyoitr ardour. Angora is full of peasants who have been converted into navvies and bricklayers with a view to hastening the construction of the new town.

Just outside Angora, the Prefecture of the town has itself installed lime kilns, brick works, and cementworks. Several sawmills, with fairly modern equipment turn out the tm her required for building purposes. Stone is shown in all the quarries of the neighbourhood. In short, feverish activity prevails everywhere. From the summit of the citadel, whither I climbed to obtain a complete vieAV of the results that have achieved, one sees more or less compact groups of houses of various sizes rising practically all over the plain. What one does not perceive very well is the general plan upon which all these buildings have been arranged. One might almost say that the architecture of the new Angora had begun by building the suburbs, and that they had placed them as far as possible from each other, as though to leave more room for the city properly so called which has not yet risen from the ground. Some of the streets are carefully paved, but others, metalled in the most rudimentary manner, are covered with thick dust, which in wet weather must Be converted into mud of the most uncomfortable sort. Any thing in the way of cleanliness or sanitation wdll be out of the question, as the city will have no sewers.