'Turkey eyes new era that blends traditions, future'

ANKARA

Turkey is seeking to usher in a new era, one that balances traditions and the future while giving support to its own unique architectural style, the country's president said on Friday.

"We aim to start a new era that blends tradition and the future, ending the period of ugly, soulless, and identity-less construction that has long dominated our country," Recep Tayyip Erdogan said at the opening ceremony of a museum in the historic city of Istanbul.

He emphasized that unfortunately Turkey’s ancestral heritage has been ransacked during some periods, and many beautiful works were destroyed.

Spreading the "horizontal architecture" style will change Turkey’s appearance completely in the medium and long term, he explained.

"Places, where a development's groundwork is not strengthened by family, not made lasting by education, and not fortified by culture and arts, will lead us to tawdriness, a lack of love, arrogance, and quagmires," he said.

He underlined that if the nation fails to support its own architecture, it will find itself surrounded by slums and "ugly" concrete buildings.

"If you cannot produce your own literature, your own music, you will be lost in the waves of the world," Erdogan added.