Ankara has been one of the important trade centers of Anatolia since ancient times; thanks to this position, it has gained the identity of a city where production, shopping, and transportation networks intersect. Trade routes developing in the Roman period were institutionalized through hans (inns/caravanserais) in the Seljuk and Ottoman periods; the city formed an economic memory that sustained its existence through trade for centuries. Ankara’s hans are the strongest structures carrying the spatial and cultural traces of this continuity to the present day. Especially during periods when mohair and sof trade gained worldwide fame, hans became lively centers where merchants, craftsmen, and travelers met, and local and international trade networks intersected. This texture was taken from Suluhan, one of Ankara’s historical trade centers; it was selected because it is an example with high representative power embodying the city’s trade memory.
Hans are not merely structures where shopping takes place. They are multi-functional spaces where production is organized, goods are stored, merchants accommodate, and commercial relations are established based on trust. The order established around stone walls and the courtyard shows that trade was conducted within a certain system and continuity. The han texture is an important spatial trace reflecting the structure of trade intertwined with daily life in Ankara. Ankara has an extremely rich potential in terms of hans and bedestens (covered bazaars). Numerous hans and bedestens surviving from old Ankara to the present day clearly reveal how ancient and continuous a structure the city’s trade memory possesses. Structures such as Suluhan, Çengelhan, Karacabey Han, and Mahmutpaşa Bedesten are among the most visible examples of this richness as centers where the pulse of Ankara’s economy once beat.
Ankara’s trade memory has continued its existence by changing form over time. The traditional trade structure shaped around hans evolved into institutional structures in the modern period; with the Republic, trade gained a new understanding of representation and organization. One of the most important carriers of this transformation is the Ankara Chamber of Commerce (ATO). The Ankara Chamber of Commerce handles Ankara’s trade tradition spanning centuries not merely as a heritage of the past but as an active part of current economic life. The organizational culture and collective structure of production that emerged in hans find a new equivalent within the institutional framework provided by ATO in the modern period. With its institutional structure, representative power, and guiding role, ATO reproduces the city’s economic memory with a contemporary vision.
While representing a wide network extending from the city’s merchants to entrepreneurs, from investors to various commercial actors, the Ankara Chamber of Commerce also ensures the continuity of Ankara’s economic identity. Thus, trade memory becomes not just a memory remaining in the past but a city layer that lives, transforms, and is carried into the future. The trade culture shaped in the stone courtyards of hans is today integrated into modern economic networks through the work carried out by ATO.
“Memory of Trade” assumes a founding and unifying role in Ankara’s urban memory. The understanding of order, trust, and continuity seen in the stone texture of Suluhan continues to live in a different form within the institutional structure of the Ankara Chamber of Commerce today. Considering the stated reasons, this texture allows us to conceive of Ankara as a city readable through historical and semantic layers, bringing the past and the present together on the same line.