From the Observatory to the Aircraft Factory, Science and Aviation in Ankara

The route begins in Etimesgut, home of Türkkuşu's flight centre, at the Air Force Museum at Şaşmaz on the 12th kilometre of the Istanbul road. The museum opened on 18 September 1998 with Sabiha Gökçen, Turkey's first female combat pilot, in attendance; of its 64,321 square metres, 2,000 are indoors. The open-air display is the main draw: the Lim-6, a Polish-built variant of the MiG-17 donated by the Bulgarian Air Force; the Shenyang J-6, the Chinese version of the MiG-19, from Pakistan; a MiG-21MF presented by Hungary; a North American F-100C Super Sabre; a helicopter; and a Blériot replica named Fethi Bey, built in 2001 for a documentary. In the Mavi Dünya building added in 1999 you can sit in the cockpits of a Lockheed T-33 and a Northrop F-5.

Indoors are set-ups recounting the flight attempts of Lagari Hasan Çelebi and Hezarfen Ahmed Çelebi, models of Turkish Air Force aircraft and air defence systems from 1911 to the present, uniforms from Ottoman times onwards, a memorial section for fallen airmen and personal belongings of well-known pilots. A cinema hall shows aviation presentations and there is a playground for children.

Practical notes: closed on Mondays; free for under-18s and over-65s; school groups come by appointment with an official letter, individual visitors simply enter. Check current hours and the fee on the museum's official page. Since the aircraft stand outdoors, an early sunny hour is best for photographs; take time to study the wing profiles of the MiGs and the air intake of the Super Sabre up close. From here return to Ulus by EGO bus along the Istanbul road.

Source: Kültür Portalı; Wikipedia (Ankara Hava Kuvvetleri Müzesi); Wikipedia (Ankara Aviation Museum).

Opposite Ankara Station, the complex at Hipodrom Street No:2 is the institutional memory of Turkish civil aviation. The Turkish Aeroplane Society was founded on 16 February 1925, took the name Turkish Aeronautical Association in 1935 and began flight training the same year through Türkkuşu. The oldest part of the site is the Parachute Tower: built between 1935 and 1937, the four-storey, 41-metre reinforced concrete tower was opened by Prime Minister Celal Bayar on 28 October 1937; the jump platforms on its three balconies, the double-weighted winch at the top and the lift are still in place. Listed in 1989, it is one of only two surviving parachute towers in Turkey, together with the one in İzmir, and is open for supervised jumps from 1 May to 31 October.

The museum building opened on 19 May 2002, with 287 square metres indoors and 5,294 outdoors. Inside are 747 documents and photographs, recreations of Lagari Hasan Çelebi's rocket flight and Hezarfen Ahmed Çelebi's winged flight from the Galata Tower, images of TOMTAŞ in Kayseri, Turkey's first aircraft factory, THK uniforms, medals and stamps, and a corner devoted to Sabiha Gökçen. In the garden stand aircraft such as the THK-15 built at the THK's Etimesgut factory, plus helicopter cockpits; the Etimesgut Aircraft Factory produced types from the THK-1 to the THK-15 between 1941 and 1950, and the THK-5 ambulance aircraft was sold to Denmark in 1950.

Closed on Mondays; hours change with the season, so check thk.org.tr. Cross to the opposite pavement to frame the tower together with the TCDD headquarters on the station square in a single shot.

Source: THK (Ankara Paraşüt Kulesi ve THK Müzesi); Kültür Portalı; Wikipedia (Türk Hava Kurumu Müzesi; Ankara Paraşüt Kulesi; Etimesgut Uçak Fabrikası).

Take the M4 metro from Ulus up to Kalaba; from the Meteoroloji station it is a few minutes' walk to the campus of the General Directorate of Meteorology. The museum building is older than aviation itself: it was built in 1908 as an agricultural school and today forms part of a faculty campus of Ankara University. During the War of Independence the first work of the Anadolu Agency was carried out here, and for six months from 27 December 1919 Mustafa Kemal and his companions used the building as headquarters. The room where he stayed and prepared operational plans is preserved as the Atatürk Room, with his desk, stove, curtains and carpets; it may be the museum's most unexpected section.

Opened by the General Directorate in March 2003, the museum is one of the few meteorology museums in the world and the only one of its kind in Turkey. It has two halls: the first holds written and visual documents tracing the development of meteorology in Turkey in chronological order, the second displays more than a hundred instruments, among them anemometers, thermometers, psychrometer sets and heliographs that record hours of sunshine. At the opening the inventory listed 140 items. Most of the instruments show how the work now done by automatic stations was once done by hand.

Visits take place on weekdays during office hours, by appointment and with a guide; it is closed at weekends and admission is free. Call the number on the museum page at mgm.gov.tr for an appointment and confirm the day before. The campus is a public institution, so bring your ID. From here, Altınpark is a short EGO bus ride away.

Source: Meteoroloji Genel Müdürlüğü; Kültür Portalı; Wikipedia (Meteoroloji Müzesi).

The last stop of the first day, the Feza Gürsey Science Centre inside Altınpark, is the right place to grasp by hand the physics behind the machines you have seen through the aviation day. Opened by the Ankara Metropolitan Municipality on 23 April 1993, it is one of Turkey's first science centres. The exhibits were brought in under a turnkey agreement with the Ontario Science Centre in Toronto and the selection was reviewed by METU faculty; inside are 48 experiment and exhibition units and a planetarium. Originally planned as the Ankara Science Centre, it was named after the physicist Feza Gürsey, who died on 13 April 1992. In January 1995 the Board of Education listed it among institutions recommended for primary and secondary students; it is run today by ANFA.

Many of the exhibits speak directly to aviation: experiments on lift, pressure, sound and light show why the wing profiles you saw in the morning are shaped the way they are. For families with children it is the most relaxed stop of the day; for adults, the planetarium show is a good preparation for the observatory visit the next evening. Check the Altınpark website for show times and entry conditions; on weekday mornings during school terms groups can be dense, and afternoons are calmer.

Altınpark itself is a place to pause: walk around the lake and gather the day's notes. From the Meteorology Museum come by the EGO lines between Kalaba and Altınpark; plenty of buses pass the park entrance back to Ulus and Kızılay.

Source: Wikipedia (Feza Gürsey Bilim Merkezi).

The second day begins in Çukurambar at the natural history museum on the campus of the General Directorate of Mineral Research and Exploration; get off at the MTA station on the M2 metro and use the Centennial Gate at Dumlupınar Boulevard No:11, since museum visits go through that gate and vehicle access to the campus is restricted. The museum opened on 7 February 1968 inside the headquarters building to display fossil, rock and mineral specimens collected during MTA fieldwork; it moved to its new building in 2003 and reopened to visitors in 2011. The collection holds more than five thousand specimens from Turkey and around the world.

The things to see, in order: a 185-million-year-old ammonite; the roughly 3,500-year-old Maraş elephant; the skeleton of the whale stranded at Yumurtalık; human footprints 13,000 years old; Baluchitherium fossils; and the last Anatolian leopard specimen, found at Beypazarı in 1974. Moving between floors you find the aquarium section opened in 2019, dioramas of endangered species and the Science Tunnel opened on the third floor in 2017 on geological heritage and biodiversity. The mineralogy-petrography section, gemstones, meteorites, cave models of Turkey's underground resources and a planetarium are also part of the museum. Outside are the İhsan Ketin Geology Park and the Şehit Mehmet Alan Energy Park, whose renewable energy installations of 2017 help power the museum.

Group visits are booked through MTA's online system and limited to thirty groups a day; individual visitors enter at the gate. Closed on 30 August; check the museum page at mta.gov.tr for open days and hours, and bring your ID. From here, return to Kızılay by metro and take the bus from Güvenpark for the evening at the observatory.

Source: MTA (müze sayfası); Wikipedia (MTA Şehit Cuma Dağ Tabiat Tarihi Müzesi).

The route ends in the sky. On the Ahlatlıbel ridge southwest of Ankara, at 1,256 metres, the observatory was founded in 1959 by the Dutch astrophysicist Egbert Adriaan Kreiken and formally opened on 26 August 1963 during an international astronomy meeting. It belongs today to Ankara University's Department of Astronomy and Space Sciences. There are nine optical telescopes, four of them under fixed domes: the largest is the 800-millimetre T80 Ritchey-Chrétien named after Prof. Dr. Berahitdin Albayrak; the 406-millimetre T40 Kreiken, named after the founder, is used for photometry of binary and variable stars; the 356-millimetre T35, the 300-millimetre T30 Maksutov and the 150-millimetre Coudé telescope for tracking sunspots complete the list. The radio telescope no longer operates. The site also has an Observatory Museum of historical instruments, dormitories for observers and a weather station that publishes its data every five minutes.

The public programme takes two forms. For Public Days and special events there is no appointment; come at the date and time announced on the website and pay the fee at the door, with the observing run by the department's astronomers and students. Groups of twenty to fifty book by telephone for weekday slots, 10.00-12.00 or 13.30-15.30; appointments are not given by e-mail. If the sky is cloudy a presentation replaces the observation, so check the forecast before setting out and dress warmly for the night.

Getting there: on İncek Boulevard, about two kilometres from the Or-An Bridge; EGO lines 190-194 from Güvenpark pass by. See rasathane.ankara.edu.tr for the event calendar and fees, and find out the time of the last bus back in advance.

Source: Ankara Üniversitesi Kreiken Rasathanesi; Wikipedia (Ankara Üniversitesi Gözlemevi); Wikipedia (Ankara University Observatory).