Eight Hundred Years of Yenimahalle from Akköprü to Yumurtatepe

When you leave Akköprü station, head north; the bridge appears after a walk of a few minutes. Do not step onto the bridge at first; find a point on the bank where you can look at it from the side. This is the only way to see the whole body of the structure, because from on top you cannot see the arches. The sources say the bridge has seven pointed arches, four large openings and three small ones. According to Turkish Wikipedia, the two openings at the southern end were buried under earth fill during municipal works, so today you may not be able to see all seven. Find the tallest arch in the middle; the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam gives its span as ten metres and describes how the other arches grow lower and smaller towards both ends. According to the same source, the bridge is seventy-seven metres long and seven metres wide.

Then move to the western face of the bridge, because the two inscriptions are on this side. One is said to be worn beyond reading and the other damaged; even so, seeing where the Arabic inscription sits makes the age of the bridge easier to grasp. Based on the inscription, TDV says the bridge was built in 1222 by Sultan Alaeddin Keykubad I. Kültür Envanteri and Wikipedia state that it was commissioned in the sultan's name by Kızıl Bey, the governor of Ankara at the time; the two accounts can be read as complementing each other. Look closely at the stones and search for blocks with carving or lettering that came from another building. TDV notes that reused stones from antiquity were also used in the construction. The sources differ on the material; TDV and Turkish Wikipedia say andesite, Kültür Envanteri and English Wikipedia say basalt, and you can decide for yourself which the colour and texture resemble.

Next, walk across the bridge to the other side, as it is open only to pedestrians today. You will notice the concrete deck and the metal railings; the sources say these were added later and that concrete fill was used in a highways repair in the 1960s. These layers are the trace of a bridge that served as a road for centuries. TDV writes that the bridge was repaired several times and that the 1970 repair tried to return it, to some extent, to its old appearance. The structure was registered on 8 August 1959. Kültür Envanteri says the bridge stands where the İncesu, Hatip and Çubuk streams meet; look at the direction of the current and try to match this confluence on a map. The old Baghdad trade road passed through here, and in Ottoman times people leaving for military service or the pilgrimage were seen off at this bridge. For photographs, choose a spot on the bank where the arches fit into the frame as a whole. When you finish, return to the station and cross south towards Tandoğan.

Source: TDV İslam Ansiklopedisi, Akköprü; Kültür Envanteri, Akköprü; Wikipedia, Akköprü (köprü).

The museum lies inside the Tandoğan headquarters compound of the Mechanical and Chemical Industry Corporation, a walk of a few hundred metres from the Anadolu/Anıtkabir station of the Ankaray line. Since it is an institutional compound, follow the directions of the staff at the entrance. Kültür Portalı states that the museum opened on 22 May 2013 and that admission is free; still, check current opening hours in the institution's announcements. Before you go inside, spend a minute on the building itself. According to Turkish Wikipedia, a cavalry barracks built in the reign of Abdülhamid II once stood here, and during the War of Independence military equipment smuggled from Istanbul to Anatolia was stored in it. The building burned down completely in a fire on 20 November 1922. The same source relates that Atatürk came here after the fire and spoke his saying "Türk, öğün, çalış, güven" at this spot. The present building was rebuilt after the fire and served various directorates of the corporation until 2013.

Begin the visit with the row of portraits at the entrance; Küre Ansiklopedi writes that portraits of the corporation's directors are displayed here. In front of the portraits, build the corporation's family tree in your mind. According to Küre, its roots reach back to the Tophane-i Amire founded in the reign of Mehmed the Conqueror; it became the General Directorate of Military Factories in 1921 and took its present name in 1950. The halls display Ottoman and Republican weapons, ammunition, lathes, drills and press machines. Slow down in front of these machines, because the real subject of the museum is production itself rather than weaponry. Seeing cartridge-making machines next to the corporation's civilian products, such as batteries, electricity meters and gas stoves, shows how a factory turned to making household goods after the war.

Be sure to find the Gazi Kovan, which Wikipedia names as the most striking piece. According to the source, this shell casing was refilled eight times within a year and a half during the War of Independence and used on nine fronts. Also give time to the War of Independence photographs on the walls and to the clippings from the corporation's newspaper. Then go out to the open-air exhibition; Wikipedia gives this area as ten thousand square metres. Here stand naval mines, locomotives and mine carts built for collieries, a tractor, construction machines and an anti-aircraft gun. The piece Küre singles out is a section cut from a gun barrel of the battlecruiser Yavuz; looking into the section and seeing the thickness of the barrel wall is the easiest way to grasp the scale. Wikipedia notes that the museum can also be toured in three dimensions, so you can take a look before you come. On the way out, return to the Ankaray line; the Gazi campus is within walking distance of Beşevler station, one stop to the west.

Source: Kültür Portalı, MKE Sanayi ve Teknoloji Müzesi; Küre Ansiklopedi, MKEK Sanayi ve Teknoloji Müzesi; Wikipedia, MKE Sanayi ve Teknoloji Müzesi.

Leave Beşevler station and walk to the main campus of Gazi University; the main building is the most striking structure on the campus. It is not a museum but a living building that houses the rectorate, the dean's office of the Gazi Faculty of Education and laboratories. So plan to spend most of this stop outside, reading the facade. First move to a point opposite the building where you can see it along its main axis. Küre Ansiklopedi explains that Mimar Kemaleddin used elements of Ottoman architecture such as arches, tiles, wide eaves and a symmetrical entrance in modern building programmes. Look for these elements on the facade one by one: the symmetry of the entrance, the arched openings and the shadow of the eaves. Kemaleddin's style later came to be called the First National Architecture Movement, and the building is counted among the last great examples of that movement.

The most striking part of the building's story is a clash of dates. According to the Gazi University article, the foundation was laid on 8 August 1927, while Kemaleddin died in Ankara in July of the same year. In other words, the architect never saw the foundation ceremony of the building regarded as his last work. English Wikipedia writes that the building was completed in two and a half years and designed for five hundred boarding students. According to the same source, the plot was an area of three hundred and sixty decares bought from the Atatürk Forest Farm for a symbolic price. In those years the campus lay about four kilometres from Ulus and its surroundings were barren; artesian wells were drilled for planting. Seeing the greenery around you today with this in mind helps you picture how a school was founded on the steppe. The gymnasium on the campus, opened in 1930, was designed by Ernst Egli, while some buildings added after 1960 are said to have spoiled the character of the main building.

The building is the home of the school founded as the Middle Teachers' School, renamed with the title Gazi in 1929 and called the Gazi Education Institute from 1976. English Wikipedia states that the school trained more than thirty thousand middle school teachers. Among those who taught here were the writer Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar and the music educator Eduard Zuckmayer, and its graduates include Rıfat Ilgaz and Fakir Baykurt. The building contains the Painting and Sculpture Museum founded in 1979 and the Mimar Kemaleddin Museum; ask the university about visiting conditions in advance. There is said to be an observatory on the roof, though it is not in operation today. If you have a twenty lira note in your pocket, look at the back; you will see that this building and a portrait of Kemaleddin have been there since 2009. The next stop lies inside the Atatürk Forest Farm to the west, and you can get there with a short taxi ride.

Source: Wikipedia, Gazi Üniversitesi; Wikipedia, Gazi Eğitim Enstitüsü; Küre Ansiklopedi, Mimar Kemaleddin Bey.

The Atatürk House stands on the grounds of the Atatürk Forest Farm and is run by the farm's directorate. The farm's official website states that admission is free, but it also publishes notices about closures during public holidays and maintenance periods, so check the site before you come. At this stop we suggest reading the building layer by layer, starting from the outside. First stand opposite and look at the facade: the house has three storeys and is painted pink. According to the official site, the house is a replica of the birth house in Thessaloniki built to the same plan and dimensions, and it was opened to visitors with a ceremony on 10 November 1981. The district page of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism gives the date 19 May 1981; Wikipedia writes that this was the day the foundation was laid. This detail shows that the replica was built within a single year for the centenary of the birth.

When you enter through the door with its stone steps, on the ground floor you see the entrance hall, the pantry and the servant's room. Pause here for a while and think about how the house worked; this is the part where goods were stored and daily chores were done. Climbing to the second floor, you find the hall, the kitchen, the sitting room and the guest room. Notice how the hall works like a corridor joining the rooms to one another. On the third floor there is again a hall, the Atatürk Room and the Museum Room. The official site gives the dimensions of the Atatürk Room as 3.86 metres by 2.82 metres; when you step inside you will feel how small the room is. On the floor lies a kilim with white, green and black flowers on a red ground. Along the wall to the right of the entrance, a bronze bust stands on a pedestal. Look at the Thessaloniki brazier on its stand in the middle of the room, the cane chairs lined along the walls and the brass gas lamp hanging from the ceiling. The book in which visitors write their impressions is also in this room, and you can leave a note if you wish.

Personal belongings are displayed in the Museum Room. The official site lists a grey suit, a cap, a tailcoat suit, a top hat, a marshal's cap, a scarf, a coffee cup and a walking stick. It is interesting to think of these objects as pieces of an everyday life from the same years as the Gazi building at the previous stop. After leaving the house, sit in the garden for a while and look out over the farm. Wikipedia writes that the farm was founded in 1925 and is the largest green area in Ankara. Here you see with your own eyes how vast the land we have mentioned since the start of the route really is. The last stop, Yumurtatepe, lies to the north; take a short taxi ride towards Çamlıca.

Source: Atatürk Orman Çiftliği, Atatürk Evi; Wikipedia, Ankara Atatürk Evi Müzesi; Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı, Yenimahalle.

Yumurtatepe is a round, green hill rising among the apartment blocks of the Çamlıca neighbourhood. At first glance it might be taken for a mound in a park, but it is a first-degree archaeological site. According to Ali Cengizkan's article, the hill was registered in 1972 and recorded as a first-degree archaeological site on 5 March 1991. So before climbing the hill, look at the signs and notices around it; if access to the top is not allowed, walking around the hill on the pavement is enough. First take a slow walk around the hill and watch its shape from different angles. You understand the egg comparison in its name best when you look at it from the side. Kültür Envanteri writes that in 1967 the hill was identified as tumulus number twenty in METU's rescue project for the Phrygian necropolis.

The story of this hill is the correction of a mistake, and the pleasure of the stop comes from thinking about it on the spot. According to Turkish Wikipedia, after the municipality began building work on the hill, the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations carried out a rescue excavation between 1986 and 1987. The excavation found the remains of an oval structure half a metre below the surface. Wikipedia writes that this structure survives to a height of about seventy centimetres. If you stand near the top of the hill, remember that these remains lie just beneath your feet. The General Directorate of Mineral Research and Exploration searched for a burial chamber by an electromagnetic method and found that a suitable void might lie ten to fifteen metres deep to the west of the centre, but digging produced no result. According to Kültür Envanteri, the conclusion reached was that the hill was not a Phrygian tumulus, and that a strategic centre dated to the Early Bronze Age had stood here. Wikipedia also writes that the place was not a large settlement and may have been used as a kind of outpost. Cengizkan, however, links the hill to the Phrygian period in his article, so the dating remains disputed today.

The hill also has a side made of memories. According to the memoirs of Münir Hayri Egeli quoted by Cengizkan, Atatürk once said of this small hill opposite the farm's main road that a small and beautiful grave could be made for him there. For this reason the hill is called the Hill of Memories in those recollections. According to the same article, this area was named the Hill of Martyrs in Ernst Egli's plan for the farm. Cengizkan reminds readers that more than thirty tumuli are known in Ankara, and that the name Beştepe comes from five tumuli on the farm. If you look north from a suitable spot, you will see the apartment blocks of Çamlıca and Demetevler. To finish the route, walk to Demetevler station on the M1 metro line; it is about one and a half kilometres away as the crow flies.

Source: Kültür Envanteri, Yumurtatepe; Wikipedia, Yumurtatepe Tümülüsü; Ali Cengizkan, Yetkin Report.