Heeding President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s “orders,” Ankara Mayor Melih Gokcek resigned Oct. 28 after 23 years in office, joining four other mayors who have stepped down under pressure over the past two months. Gokcek’s resignation, however, resonates beyond the internal jitters in the Justice and Development Party (AKP) as his legacy in the capital represents an urban illustration of how Turkey’s rulers have sought to settle scores with the secular republic.

Throughout his 23 years in office, Gokcek stirred controversy by destroying places of symbolic importance for the modern Turkish republic that Mustafa Kemal Ataturk created on the ashes of the Ottoman Empire in 1923. He opened to construction the Ataturk Forest Farm, a sprawling green area that Ataturk had created in the capital. He tore down Ataturk’s Marmara Mansion on the farm and amended construction rules in the vicinity of Ataturk’s mausoleum, allowing for the construction of tall buildings that would block the imposing view of the mausoleum, which sits on a hill overlooking the city.

Gokcek also ordered the demolition of the Iller Bank building — another legacy of Ataturk and a first-degree heritage site — and then posed triumphantly on the rubble in what seemed an open show of revanchism. The cleared area was then added to the yard of an adjacent mosque.

According to Tezcan Karakus Candan, the chairwoman of the Architects Chamber’s Ankara branch, Gokcek’s stint as mayor “put under threat” a highly symbolic area between Ankara’s districts of Ulus and Cankaya, where the heart of Ataturk’s republic beat. “All those demolitions had a common meaning — the notion of destroying the [secular] regime was reflected on city space,” she said.