Past scholarship on the origins of Turkey’s forward capital has contributed both to insightful critical analysis of modernity, nationalism, and urbanization in the republic but also to a tradition of work that is too often quite narrow in conceptualization and shallow in historical depth. In this article, I address the promise and the shortcomings of this tradition by incorporating both views of nature and novel primary documents from the city’s early republican pasts. Focusing on problems within 1920s Ankara as depicted in both foreign and nationalist narratives, on the one hand, and perspectives from public health and other state officials, on the other hand, I engage with water as a key problem not only in its scarcity but also in its excess. This research shows that not only planning but also the attainment of public health objectives (as framed in terms of place and nature) were established unambiguously as preconditions to the project of urban – and hence national – development. Additionally, as a study on the early republican capital that utilizes unique sources, this article identifies and analyzes alternative voices, thus expanding our views of the place and period in ways that elucidate the complex dynamics of both place-making and political ecology in this still contested context.