On a recent trip I visited the Eskisehir Museum of Independence. Housed in an early example of Turkish first national architecture built in 1915, the museum celebrates Atatürk and the Turkish Republic through hundreds of photos, paintings and collages. It includes displays of events such as the battles of Gallipoli, Sakarya and Dumlupınar, models of…
The name Mustafa Kemal Ataturk is known the length and breadth of Turkey and beyond. There are statues, memorials and monuments in his honour all over the place and even a street named after him in Tunis, the capital of Tunisia. One of the first places I ever visited related to Ataturk was the huge…
Anyone who follows my blog will know I’m a Kadıköy girl. It was the first district where I lived in Istanbul, and other than a brief six month foray on the other side, Kadıköy has always been my home in Istanbul. So it was exciting to learn that Ataturk Youth and Sports Day, commemorated every…
Unlike the pictures of Queen Elizabeth hanging on the walls of the halls and schools where I grew up in suburban Australia, showing a poised, distant figure, portraits of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, show an intense, charismatic man, seemingly ready to burst out of the frame in order to bring Turkey into the modern world. Born…