Museums in Turkey are today undergoing an opening and privatization that is emblematic of larger changes that are occurring across the country. While this opening brings with it a greater diversity of forums in which cultural groups have expression, it is not necessarily accompanied by a greater degree of liberalism. Using a set of museums in Gaziantep, a city in southeastern Turkey, as a case study, this paper explores present-day issues of national identity and projection of self through the urban spaces that are being created and restored for various purposes. Given that there has been a proliferation in recent years of museums and restoration projects in this particular city, Gaziantep provides an especially interesting framework for such a study. These museums and urban renewal projects, largely promoted by the municipal government, have been designed to both claim Gaziantep’s position in the national story and to secure its place internationally. Museums are used to assert a particular framework of multiculturalism, or a pluralism of peoples, origins, and traditions that exist, as well as emphasize certain historical narratives – all of which are fashioning a particular face to the rest of the nation, asserting its importance to the international community, and reshaping the city itself. In this study, I look at how the visitor is presented with historical narratives of the city in museums, restored neighborhoods, bazaars, and former churches and look specifically at the ways in which the city’s expression of self is closely tied to the Independence War and the former Armenian populations. I study the ways in which museums and urban projects are deliberately creating and perpetuating narratives while suppressing others in a manner that, while categorically different than the nationalist homogenizing force that swept early Republican museums, is still closely tied to stories that bind citizens to homeland and city to nation. Using Kirschenblatt-Gimblett’s discussion of culture and commodity, as well as Esra Ozyurek’s arguments for social liberalism and nostalgia for Ottoman pluralism, and Fabian’s discussion of time as an “other-izing” force, this study tries to place the emerging role of Gaziantep’s vibrant museum culture into a larger museological framework that is both emblematic of Turkey today and provides an important case study in which nationalism and multiculturalism intersect in the dialectic of museums.