A Friday Night at IKEA Ankara

Some places begin as stores and somehow become part of a city’s social life.

That was the strange thing about IKEA Ankara.

In September 2011, I wrote about it with the kind of confidence I often had then when observing other people’s habits.

I had tried the famous meatballs.

My conclusion was that anyone going there only to eat them needed to reconsider their life choices.

I had also heard—and partly observed—that Mamak’s nightlife seemed to be happening there.

The place was crowded with people who did not fit any single category.

And when people said it was the biggest IKEA in Turkey, I dismissed that too.

Of course it was big, I thought.

Half of it was pillows and duvets.

That was the entry.

Short.

Mocking.

Very certain.

Looking back, what interests me is not whether the meatballs deserved the trip.

What interests me is that a furniture store had become somewhere people went even when buying furniture was not the main point.

That seemed absurd to me then.

It makes much more sense now.

Cities do not use buildings exactly as architects or companies intend.

People assign their own meaning.

A shopping mall becomes somewhere teenagers spend an afternoon.

A bookstore becomes a quiet refuge.

A café becomes an office.

A gas station becomes a meeting point.

A university campus becomes a walking route.

A furniture store becomes a Friday-night destination.

Commercial space becomes social space.

The transformation happens gradually.

Nobody announces it.

One family comes for dinner.

Another comes to look around.

Someone wants coffee.

Someone wants to walk somewhere warm when the weather is bad.

Someone brings a child because there is room to move.

Someone is curious about the new store.

Someone really does want meatballs.

Soon the place is not merely selling objects.

It is hosting a city.

My younger reaction was:

Why would anyone come here just for food?

This is the kind of question that contains its own assumption.

A place should have one correct purpose.

Restaurants are for eating.

Furniture stores are for buying furniture.

Bars are for drinking.

Parks are for walking.

Reality is more flexible.

People go where they feel comfortable.

Or where parking is easy.

Or where the lighting is pleasant.

Or where they can spend two hours without needing a better reason.

That last part matters.

We often underestimate the value of places where nothing important has to happen.

Not every evening needs a cultural mission.

Not every outing needs to justify itself.

People are allowed to say:

Let’s go there.

Why?

Because it is there.

That is enough.

At the time, I probably would not have accepted this easily.

I had stronger ideas about which places were worth going to.

Somewhere authentic.

Somewhere interesting.

Somewhere that justified the trip.

A furniture chain did not qualify.

But urban life is built from convenience as much as taste.

Sometimes people choose a place because it works.

It is warm.

Open late.

Accessible.

Predictable.

Nobody expects too much.

There is food.

There are toilets.

There are things to look at.

You can walk around without committing to anything.

That is actually a strong package.

IKEA, especially, is unusually good at creating the illusion that you are doing more than shopping.

You enter a sequence of rooms.

Bedrooms.

Kitchens.

Living rooms.

Children’s spaces.

Temporary little lives arranged under artificial light.

You are not simply looking at furniture.

You are walking through possible versions of domestic life.

This sofa.

That lamp.

A smaller table.

A different kitchen.

A cleaner room than the one you have at home.

Retail becomes imagination.

You can visit rooms you do not own.

For a young adult, that has a particular appeal.

Home is still partly unfinished as an idea.

Maybe you are renting.

Maybe living with family.

Maybe moving between student life and working life.

Maybe your furniture is inherited, mismatched, temporary, or chosen according to price rather than taste.

Then you enter a store full of complete rooms.

Everything coordinates.

Nothing has accumulated accidentally over fifteen years.

The result is artificial.

Of course.

But it is a satisfying artificiality.

A home without history.

Everything selected at once.

Real homes rarely look like that.

Real homes contain objects bought at different ages, under different budgets, for different reasons.

A chair from one period.

A table from another.

A ridiculous object nobody throws away because somebody remembers where it came from.

Stores sell coherence.

Homes accumulate biography.

Maybe that is part of why people enjoy wandering through places like IKEA without buying much.

You get to borrow coherence for an hour.

Then comes the restaurant.

The meatballs had already become famous enough that they were almost part of the brand.

I had tried them and was unimpressed by the idea of making a special trip just for that.

This judgment says more about me than the food.

Food is rarely only food.

People go back to ordinary meals because of association.

Routine.

Price.

Convenience.

Nostalgia.

The pleasure of knowing what you will get.

A meal does not have to be extraordinary to become a destination.

This is obvious when talking about neighborhood restaurants.

Less obvious when the destination is upstairs from wardrobes and lamps.

But why should the mechanism be different?

If somebody enjoys it, they go.

My younger self treated this almost as a failure of standards.

Why would you go all the way there just for meatballs?

The better question is:

If that small pleasure is enough reason for them, why should I care?

There is a freedom in learning not to police harmless enjoyment.

This is one of the quieter improvements that can come with age.

You stop needing everyone to enjoy things for reasons you approve of.

Someone loves a chain restaurant.

Fine.

Someone spends Saturday evening walking around a mall.

Fine.

Someone goes to IKEA for meatballs.

Also fine.

Taste does not need a court.

That does not mean all criticism disappears.

Places can be ugly.

Food can be mediocre.

Commercial environments can manipulate attention.

Consumer culture can turn leisure into purchasing.

All true.

But people are still capable of using commercial spaces on their own terms.

They can browse and leave.

Eat and leave.

Meet friends.

Walk around.

Laugh at furniture names.

Sit on sofas they will never buy.

A company’s purpose and a visitor’s purpose are not always the same.

This is where the line about “Mamak nightlife” becomes more interesting.

I meant it sarcastically.

The idea that a district’s nightlife might be happening in a furniture store sounded funny.

But perhaps it also captured something real about Ankara.

Not every part of a city has the same density of cafés, bars, pedestrian streets, or public evening spaces.

People improvise.

Where do you go?

Wherever there is something.

The city distributes social opportunity unevenly.

Some neighborhoods have obvious centers.

Others borrow them from shopping developments.

A retail complex can become a square by accident.

This does not mean it replaces public space perfectly.

It does not.

Commercial places have rules, closing times, security, and economic expectations.

But people still use them as commons when alternatives are limited.

That should make us curious rather than contemptuous.

What need is being filled?

Warmth?

Safety?

Parking?

Family friendliness?

A place to meet without drinking?

A place where different generations can all find something to do?

A place where spending money is optional enough to make lingering possible?

These are real urban needs.

Sometimes a furniture store meets them better than urban planning does.

That is mildly ridiculous.

It is also informative.

The phrase “full of unrelated types” from my old entry is another one I would write differently now.

What did I mean?

Probably that the crowd did not fit the image I had assigned to the store.

People of different ages.

Styles.

Reasons for being there.

That diversity felt mismatched.

But that is what public life looks like.

The more socially mixed a place is, the less coherent the crowd appears to someone expecting a category.

A specialist bar has a type.

A university classroom has a type.

A workplace has a type.

A place used by the general public has everyone.

That can feel chaotic.

It is also healthy.

Cities need environments where people who would not normally choose one another still occupy the same space.

Not interact deeply.

Just coexist.

Families.

Students.

Older people.

Workers.

Couples.

People killing time.

People with shopping lists.

People without shopping lists.

This mild coexistence matters.

Urban life is not only friendship and community.

It is also learning to share space with strangers whose choices make no sense to you.

IKEA is an excellent place to practice this.

Everyone moves at a different speed.

Some people study every room.

Some rush toward one product.

Some stop in the middle of the path.

Some appear to be furnishing an entire house.

Some are there for one lamp.

Some may, scandalously, be there for meatballs.

You must accept all of them.

The store layout tries to impose a route.

Humans immediately create exceptions.

Shortcuts.

Backtracking.

Arguments about whether to continue.

“I thought we were only buying one thing.”

That sentence has probably been spoken in every IKEA in the world.

The scale of the Ankara store also amused me.

People said it was the largest IKEA in Turkey.

My response was basically:

Of course. Half the building is filled with pillows and blankets.

This is classic younger-me reasoning.

Technically observation.

Emotionally accusation.

Large store?

I can explain that.

They cheated with duvets.

There is something satisfying about finding a deflating explanation for an impressive claim.

Biggest?

Yes, but…

Fastest?

Yes, but…

Most advanced?

Yes, but…

People love puncturing superlatives.

Maybe because superlatives feel like marketing, and marketing invites resistance.

The instinct is useful.

Claims should be questioned.

But constant deflation becomes another kind of predictability.

Sometimes a large thing is simply large.

Sometimes a popular thing is genuinely enjoyable.

Sometimes a famous product is good enough.

Skepticism is valuable until it becomes an identity.

Then you start needing disappointment.

If everyone likes something, you arrive already prepared not to.

I recognize some of that in old entries.

There was pleasure in being unconvinced.

The meatballs?

Overrated.

The biggest store?

Mostly bedding.

The crowd?

Strange.

This voice is funny to read now because it is so committed to not being impressed.

Youth often wants distinction.

You build identity partly through rejection.

I do not like what everyone likes.

I do not go where everyone goes.

I know better.

Taste becomes architecture for the self.

Later, if you are lucky, you become less afraid of liking ordinary things.

You can enjoy something popular without surrendering individuality.

You can dislike something without needing everyone else to be foolish for liking it.

This is a relief.

The world becomes less argumentative.

Not every preference needs a defense.

The old IKEA entry is valuable because it preserves the argumentative version.

I had gone.

I had observed.

I had eaten the meatballs.

I had formed conclusions.

Strong ones.

That was enough for a few lines.

Now those lines show more than the store.

They show the person walking through it.

A man in 2011 noticing the crowd, judging the food, measuring the place against his own idea of what counted as a worthwhile destination.

That is what personal archives do best.

They preserve the observer together with the observation.

If I wrote only about IKEA Ankara today, I would probably write about retail architecture, mixed-use social space, consumer behavior, and the strange comfort of staged rooms.

That would be more analytical.

Possibly more accurate.

But it would lose the original voice.

The man who looked around and thought:

So this is Mamak nightlife now?

The man who saw the store’s size and blamed the pillows.

He deserves to remain in the story too.

Not because he was right.

Because he was there.

And perhaps the mature response is not to erase the old judgment but to place it beside the newer one.

Yes, the younger me was snobbish about people going there for meatballs.

Now I think people do not need a sophisticated reason to enjoy an evening.

Yes, I found the mixed crowd ridiculous.

Now I see that mixed crowds are what make a place socially interesting.

Yes, I mocked the store’s size.

I still think counting square meters full of duvets is a funny way to achieve greatness.

Some jokes are worth keeping.

Maturity should not remove all sarcasm.

Only the unnecessary cruelty.

The memory becomes better when both versions are allowed to exist.

The old one provides energy.

The new one provides perspective.

Together they say something about cities.

Places become meaningful through use, not through official purpose.

A furniture store can become a restaurant.

A restaurant can become a family outing.

A family outing can become neighborhood nightlife.

And a sarcastic three-line entry can become, years later, a reminder that people are very good at turning whatever space they are given into somewhere to live a little.

Maybe that is what I missed in 2011.

I was looking at IKEA and asking:

Why are all these people here?

The answer was probably very simple.

They wanted somewhere to go.