Out of the ashes of the Ottoman Empire and at the end of a protracted war of independence that followed close on the heels of the First World War, the Republic of Turkey came into being in 1923. Its founders—a group of career military officers led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk—set into motion in rapid order a number of societal reforms aimed at building a modernized and Westernized nation-state. Part of the founders’ vision was to build the country’s new capital closer to the center of its landmass. The location of choice was Ankara in the country’s rural interior, and it carried a political message of major proportions. Its implementation, and the visual development of Ankara from the ground up as a major city and cultural center, was another matter. Since the statement needed to be articulated in a modern, or Western, design, Ottoman-Turkish architects were not considered for most of the jobs and, moreover, they were too few for the rapid expansion of Ankara as well as Istanbul. So Turkey assembled a group of top-of-the-line, mostly Austrian and German, talent. While doing this, planning was used as a tool for creating a capital for independence. Using archival documents, this article recounts and illustrates the physical creation of Turkey’s capital city, the emergence of new visions, and the foreign actors of the built environment in the early republican process.