Independence War Museum

The building began in 1916 as a clubhouse for the Committee of Union and Progress, designed by Foundation Architect Salim Bey on the orders of Enver Pasha and taken forward by military architect İsmail Hasif Bey. War, shortages of materials and the party's collapse left the roof and other parts unfinished.

After the First World War, under the Armistice of Mudros, a French commander even used its first room as an office, while the roof was still partly missing. Ankara then became the centre of the National Struggle: Mustafa Kemal Pasha arrived on 27 December 1919 with the Representative Committee after the Amasya Circular and the Erzurum and Sivas congresses.

When Istanbul was formally occupied in March 1920 and the Ottoman parliament suspended its work, Mustafa Kemal announced that a new assembly, in which sovereignty belonged to the nation, would open in Ankara. No suitable hall existed, so the half-built clubhouse was fitted out for the purpose, and the Grand National Assembly opened here on 23 April 1920. Today the museum presents that pivotal chapter of modern Turkish history in the very rooms where it happened.