Atatürk Müzesi (Şişli)

The Atatürk Museum is a three-storey house on Halaskargazi Caddesi in Şişli, a few minutes on foot from the Osmanbey metro station. The avenue takes its name from the title given to Atatürk, which means "the liberating veteran". The house was built in 1908 for Osep Kasabyan and is one of the early examples of the mansions and apartment buildings that rose along this avenue between 1910 and 1920. At the end of the First World War Mustafa Kemal left the Syrian front, arrived in Istanbul on 13 November 1918 and, some time later, rented this house. He brought over his mother Zübeyde Hanım and his sister Makbule, who had been living in Akaretler; the family settled on the top floor, he himself on the middle floor and his aide-de-camp on the ground floor. According to the sources, the entrance floor held the aide's room and the dining room, the second floor the meeting and study rooms and the bedrooms, and the third floor the rooms of his mother and sister. In those months, while Istanbul was under occupation, Mustafa Kemal met his friends in this house again and again. He lived here until 16 May 1919, the day he set out for Samsun, sailing that day aboard the steamer Bandırma. In 1924 the house was bought by Hasan Tahsin Uzer, a former governor, and a plaque was placed on the facade stating that Atatürk had lived here in 1919. The Istanbul municipality bought the building from Uzer at the end of the 1920s; the sources give 1927 and 28 May 1928 as the date. From then on the municipality began to gather Atatürk's belongings, documents and memorabilia in the building. Under Lütfi Kırdar, who was both governor and mayor, the building was turned into a museum and opened to visitors on 15 June 1942 as the Atatürk Revolution Museum. After a partial fire in 1962, the house underwent a major restoration as the centenary of Atatürk's birth approached; it was renewed in the style of the 1910s, from the door knockers to the window glass. The museum reopened on 19 May 1981 under the name Atatürk Museum. The most recent restoration took place in 2014 and the museum went back into service on 10 November 2015. Today it belongs to the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality and is described as a national, biographical house museum. The display follows Atatürk's life chronologically across the three floors; photographs, clothes, objects he used, documents of the War of Independence and paintings are presented together. The entrance floor covers his birth, his years of schooling and early officer years, the Tripolitania and Balkan Wars, Gallipoli, the Armistice of Mudros and the preparations for the national struggle; the bust of Atatürk by the sculptor Hüseyin Gezer also stands on this floor. The first floor begins with the landing at Samsun and moves on to the Amasya Circular and the congresses of Erzurum and Sivas. On the same floor are the frock coat and waistcoat he wore at the Sivas Congress, the jacket he bought in Karlsbad in 1918, the suit he wore in the 1920s, his kalpak, his boots and his marshal's uniform. The pens used in parliament during the abolition of the sultanate, his notebook, the first edition of the Nutuk from 1927 and the identity card issued in Ankara in the name of Gazi Mustafa Kemal Paşa are on this floor too. The music cabinet given to Atatürk by the United States president Franklin D. Roosevelt is one of the pieces where visitors linger longest. The second floor holds Vittorio Pisani's paintings on the War of Independence, a model of the house in Thessaloniki where Atatürk was born, his dinner jacket labelled Lausanne, his tailcoat and the clothes of his final years. His medals, coffee cup, visiting cards and the book he signed at the municipality on 9 July 1927, on his first visit to Istanbul after the proclamation of the Republic, can also be seen here. Among the paintings, İbrahim Çallı's portrait of Atatürk from 1937 and his canvas of the Greek commander Trikupis handing over his sword stand out, together with the painting by Zeki Kocamemi. Because it is a house museum, the space is small; coming at a quiet hour rather than with a large group leaves time to read the panels. Start your visit on the entrance floor and work upwards; the chronology is built that way and each floor continues the one below. The bay window and the carved wooden trim of the roof still read as a Şişli house of the 1910s; take a minute to look at the facade from the opposite pavement before going in. Check the current visiting days and hours on the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality's page. The easiest way to get there is the M2 line to Osmanbey station; a few minutes' walk along Halaskargazi Caddesi brings you to the museum. Buses coming from the Şişli and Mecidiyeköy direction also stop on the same avenue. The Osmanbey quarter takes its name from the mansion of Osman Bey, founder of the Matbaa-i Osmaniye printing house, which stood here. Those who want to see Şişli's heritage from the Second Constitutional era can fit the Abide-i Hürriyet, in the same district, into the same day.