Sivas Atatürk and Congress Museum

The three-storey building with an inner courtyard on Taşlı Sokak in Sivas began as a school. In September 1919 it turned into a headquarters and a congress hall where Mustafa Kemal and his colleagues worked for days on end. The hall in which the congress sat, together with the room Mustafa Kemal used for work and rest, is kept close to its look in those days.

History

The governor of Sivas, Mazlum Paşazade Mehmet Memduh Bey, had the building constructed on 5 October 1892 as a Mülkî İdadî, a state secondary school. In 1911 it became the Vilayet-i Sultanisi, or provincial lycée. The Sivas Congress, a key stage of the National Struggle against the occupations that followed the First World War, met here from 4 to 11 September 1919. Mustafa Kemal and the Heyet-i Temsiliye, the Representative Committee that led the movement, used the building as their headquarters from early September until mid-December 1919, 108 days in all.

The building was assigned to Sivas Lycée in 1924, and classes went on there until 1981. Once repairs and a new display were done, it opened to visitors in 1983 under the name Sivas Atatürk Ethnography and Congress Museum. The name Atatürk and Congress Museum, under the Sivas Museum, dates from 2016.

The building

A fine example of late Ottoman civil architecture of the nineteenth century, the building has stone outer walls and timber interiors. It rises three floors around an inner courtyard.

Exhibits and visiting

The museum holds 41 ethnographic objects connected with Atatürk and the congress, among them the desk Mustafa Kemal used while it met. Rooms on the ground floor cover the Mondros Armistice, signed after the First World War, and the occupations, the press, communications, and the road from Samsun to Sivas. There are also a documentary room, a children's room, a library and a conference hall. The first floor has the room where Mustafa Kemal stayed, the Congress Hall and a section on the question of the mandate and protectorate, the proposal to place the country under a foreign power's administration, as well as a room for women in the National Struggle and one on the people of Sivas and the congress. The telegraph room, the hall for the congress minutes, leaflets of the Anatolian Women's Association for the Defence of the Homeland, founded in Sivas, and the press that printed the newspaper İrade-i Milliye with copies of the paper are also shown.

The museum is in the centre of Sivas, close to the Sivas Archaeology Museum and the Aşık Veysel Museum. See the official page for current visiting details. The MüzeKart is valid for Turkish citizens.