A Day at the Atatürk Forest Farm

The route begins the moment you step off the train. Sincan-Kayaş trains on the Başkentray B1 line use the island platform at Gazi; the stone building behind the side platform opposite is Gazi Station, opened on 1 February 1926. It is the first station after Ankara Central in the Eskişehir direction, a few minutes from the central station by train. Its architect was Ahmet Burhanettin Tamcı, and the building counts among the monumental station buildings of the First National Architecture movement. Look at the facade: pointed arches, tiles with 16th-century motifs, carved wooden eaves. In the words of the Türkiye Tourism Encyclopaedia, traditional Ottoman tile motifs are combined with a new, Western-influenced scheme; you can read the architectural language of the period in a single building. The tiles were brought from Kütahya.

The station was built for visitors to the farm and long served as a protocol gate. Atatürk used to alight here on returning from his tours of the country, and the Republic's first official guest, King Amanullah of Afghanistan, was seen off from here. It returned to service in 1972 with the electrified suburban line; in the early 2000s the building was leased as a restaurant. Closed on 11 July 2016 for the Başkentray works, the station reopened on 12 April 2018.

The historic building is closed to passengers; you cannot go in, but it is seen from the platform side and from Silahtar Caddesi. Twenty minutes is enough. Leaving the station, walk south towards Çiftlik Caddesi; the second stop is a few hundred metres on. You will take the train back from the same station, so check the current Başkentray timetable on the TCDD Taşımacılık website.

Source: Wikipedia; Kent ve Demiryolu; Türkiye Turizm Ansiklopedisi.

A few hundred metres south of the station, on Çiftlik Caddesi, stands the industrial core of the farm. Founded in 1934, the factory was extended in 1937 to designs by Ernst Arnold Egli with an additional building, a restaurant, housing for staff and workers, and a bathhouse. Vienna-born Egli was one of the busiest architects in the making of Ankara between 1927 and 1938; the Music Teachers' School, the Faculty of Political Sciences and the Turkish Aeronautical Association building are also his. On the farm he also drew the Marmara Pavilion, the Tenth Year school opened in 1934 and the staff housing.

The building to look at here is the bathhouse. According to Leyla Alpagut's article, instead of copying the shower blocks of contemporary European factories Egli kept the traditional bath sequence of cold, warm and hot rooms and built it in reinforced concrete with domes on top. A small but clear example of the early Republic's effort to marry modern materials with local building types. The factory passed to Tekel in 1939; the restaurant and housing were demolished in 2014, while the factory building, the bathhouse and the listed grain silo survived. The Chamber of Architects applied to the conservation board for the complex in 2013.

The complex is now leased out by the farm administration and the bathhouse is closed to visitors; do not go in, look at the buildings from the street. Thirty minutes is enough; you can make out the domes of the bathhouse and the bulk of the silo from the street, and this is the little-known photo spot of the route. From here walk south to the Atatürk House.

Source: DergiPark, Leyla Alpagut; Arkitera; Wikipedia, Ernst Egli; Sanattan Yansımalar, Savaş Sönmez.

The most visited building on the farm, an exact replica of the house in Thessaloniki where Atatürk was born. It was commissioned on the initiative of the Ankara Chamber of Commerce for the centenary of his birth and opened to visitors on 10 November 1981; the Çarmıklı brothers carried out the construction. The house stands on Alparslan Türkeş Caddesi. It was built as a three-storey copy of the house in Thessaloniki; the entrance floor has a stone staircase, a pantry and a servant's room, the second floor a parlour, kitchen, sitting room and guest room, and the third floor a parlour, the Atatürk Room and the Museum Room.

The Atatürk Room is a small space of 3.86 by 2.82 metres; a 90-centimetre bronze bust on a wooden base painted to look like marble, cane chairs, a Thessaloniki brazier, a gas lamp and lace curtains recreate the domestic atmosphere of the period. In the Museum Room four cases display formal suits, kalpaks, overcoats and personal items such as a watch, cufflinks, a cane and a coffee cup. The rooms are small; be prepared to wait on busy days, weekday mornings are easier.

Admission is free; the farm's official website lists the visiting days, check before you go. For those who cannot go to Thessaloniki, this replica is the easiest way to grasp the scale of the house and the layout of its rooms; walking the three floors also shows you how a late 19th-century Thessaloniki house was arranged. Forty-five minutes is enough. On leaving, walk east along Silahtar Caddesi to the State Cemetery; the Black Sea Pool lies inside its grounds.

Source: AOÇ resmi sitesi, Atatürk Evi; Wikipedia, Atatürk Orman Çiftliği.

The farm was founded in 1925 by draining marshland, and two large pools were dug to collect the excess water, one in the shape of the Sea of Marmara and one in the shape of the Black Sea. Completed in 1931 according to the sources, the pools both irrigated the fields and served, in a capital with no sea, as the places where people swam and held rowing races; according to SALT's archive note, swimming and boating in the pools were possible in the 1930s. At the head of the Marmara Pool stood the Marmara Pavilion, designed by Egli for Atatürk in the late 1920s. The pavilion was demolished in 2016; as the building lies on the Beştepe side it is not on the route.

The Black Sea Pool lies within the grounds of the State Cemetery. Opened on 30 August 1988, the cemetery was laid out so that 356,000 of its 536,000 square metres are green space; the pool was restored during construction and now stands as an ornamental pool. Swimming is not allowed. The grounds are run by the Ministry of National Defence and are open to the public; inside is a small museum displaying belongings and documents of the presidents and commanders of the War of Independence buried here. The ceremonial ground has an octagonal structure sheltering visitors from the weather and a memorial wall bearing the names of those buried. Check entry conditions and hours on the Ministry's website.

This is a quiet place; do not talk loudly or picnic by the pool. Forty-five minutes is enough to see the pool and the museum. On leaving, move on to the farm centre, to the park and the shop beside the administration building on Yeni Çiftlik Caddesi; you are in the same neighbourhood.

Source: Wikipedia, Devlet Mezarlığı; Haber Ankara; SALT Araştırma; Kültür Envanteri, Marmara Köşkü.

The centre of the farm is the area around the administration building on Yeni Çiftlik Caddesi in Emniyet Mahallesi. The Gazi Forest Farm Park here covers 6 hectares; the farm administration relaid it with its own resources in 2011. Under ash, maple, oak, black pine and cedar there are seating areas, children's playgrounds, a pool and a rose garden of 500 roses. In his letter of donation Atatürk asked that the farm provide the public with healthy places of rest; this park is today's answer to that sentence and the right place for the day's lunch break.

Right next to the park is the factory shop. The farm now operates as a public enterprise under the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry; the dairy produces pasteurised milk, kaşar and white cheese, yoghurt, ayran, kefir, butter and ice cream, and the second factory fruit juice and honey. According to the Ministry's magazine the two factories turn out 87 products, and the cheese and ice-cream units were renewed in 2021. Buying milk, cheese and ice cream from the shop and eating them in the park is the shortest way to understand why the farm was founded; according to the magazine the farm makes additive-free production its principle and has been exporting to Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands since 2021.

Allow an hour. There is plenty of tree shade on summer afternoons, but carry water all the same. The afforested area has grown from 4,500 decares in 2000 to nearly 23,000 today, and you see the result on the roads around the park. The route ends here; walk back to Gazi station for the Başkentray and check the time of the last train in advance. Those with time can add the Museum and Exhibition Hall on Ankara Boulevard.

Source: AOÇ resmi sitesi, Gazi Orman Çiftliği Parkı ve Süt Fabrikası; Türk Tarım dergisi; AOÇ resmi sitesi, Tarihçe.