Guide
The Silifke Atatürk House and Ethnography Museum commemorates Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's first visit to the town. He came to Silifke on 27 January 1925 and spent one night in this house, and the things he used that night are displayed in the museum.
The two-storey wooden building standing in its garden was built in 1914 and its proper name is the Hacı Hulusi mansion. Expropriation began in 1974 and was completed in 1982 by the general directorate of antiquities and museums. Restoration work began in 1983, was finished in 1986, and the house opened to visitors with an official ceremony on 2 January 1987.
Atatürk set out on 20 January 1925 on a journey through southern Anatolia, partly for official visits and partly for reasons of his own, with his wife Latife Hanım travelling with him. One of his aims was to establish a farm in the south on the model of the forest farm at Ankara, which mattered as an example to the country's farmers. With that in view, the Olukbaşı farm at Tekir village near Silifke, which belonged to the treasury, had been suggested to him.
On the evening of 27 January 1925 he left his wife at Mersin and went on to Silifke, then the provincial centre of İçel. After a brief meeting with the acting governor, Fahri Bey, he spent the night in Hacı Hulusi's two-storey house.
The next day, 28 January, he began his programme in Silifke with visits to the Turkish Hearth and the sports club, then went on to Taşucu as the guest of Sadık Taşucu, and afterwards to Tekir village to see the Olukbaşı farm for himself. On the strength of that visit he decided to buy the farm from the treasury. The journey went into the record as an important one, on which he both carried on the business of state and planned his own efforts towards the agricultural development of the country.
Atatürk showed his interest in Silifke by coming here four times. On one of those visits he bought a farm, said that an agricultural credit cooperative should be founded with that farm as its centre, and became member number one of it himself.
