Ankara

Suna and İnan Kıraç Foundation İstanbul Research Institute presents a new and meaningful exhibition looking at Ankara, the capital city, from another city and from a different perspective on the 86th anniversary of the Republic: "Ankara: City of the Black Calpac, 1923-1938."

The exhibition tells the story of Ankara, the capital that became the image of the Republic with the "Parliament" at its center and the exemplary lifeworld of the national idea; in doing so, it focuses on Ankara's architecture, its social life and its modernized look that were shaped by and around Atatürk.

Through photographs, documents and objects, the exhibition showcases Ankara, a city founded on the clashing symbols of the Ottoman Empire and the Republic, and its architectural elements ranging from the Ottoman residential fabric to the modern urban sprawl of the Early Republic; it recreates the exhilaration that accompanied the founding of the Republic and the daily life that was shaped around Atatürk himself.

The Republic Ball invitations; photographs and menus bearing witness to the good times in Ankara Palas with the Gazi; hats worn with great eagerness; letters written in a shaky hand using the Latin alphabet; the yellowed tickets of Çiftlik and Baraj buses; the candy boxes with pictures of the Victory Monument and the Parliament on them; the Red Crescent handkerchiefs; invoices of furniture bought from Koçzadeler and the journals that published the first poems of the Garip poets: as the souvenir archive of the Early Republic, "Ankara: the City of the Black Calpac, 1923-1938" narrates the story of the founding days of the Republic and the construction of Ankara, the new capital, as an exemplary city.

"Ankara, the Heart of Turkey," a film created by the Russian director Sergei Yutkeviç, who visited Ankara on the 10th anniversary of the Republic, is also included in this exhibition, courtesy of the Presidency Archives of the Republic of Turkey. Reşat Nuri Güntekin and Fikret collaborated on the making of this film, which presented striking images of the Ottoman Ankara and the modern Ankara built by the Republic. The film was shown in movie theaters, schools and squares in 1934.