The Turkish Aeronautical Association museum stands on Hipodrom Avenue in Ulus, the part of Ankara where the city's older buildings stand, beside the historic parachute tower, from which jumps are run under the supervision of parachute instructors. The museum opened on 19 May 2002 in the Altındağ district; the site is 287 square metres under roof and 5,294 square metres in the open.
Three things share the grounds: the parachute tower, which is a registered monument; a garden where original aircraft and replicas are displayed, and where visitors can look inside the cockpit of the helicopter parked there; and the museum building itself, which holds the documents.
The galleries trace the development of aviation in Türkiye and elsewhere through cases filled with documents and photographs — 747 of them in all, covering the history of the association and of Turkish civil aviation. Among them are images of the TOMTAŞ factory at Kayseri, the first aircraft factory in Türkiye, which was in production in the 1920s. Uniforms worn in the association, medals and decorations, stamps issued for it, and models of its facilities, among them the Türkkuşu and İnönü training centres, are shown alongside.
Two cases reach further back than aviation itself. One shows Hezârfen Ahmed Çelebi's flight from the Galata Tower across to Doğancılar in Üsküdar on wings he made himself; the other shows Lagâri Hasan Çelebi, in the reign of Murad IV, firing a seven-armed rocket and rising into the air off Sarayburnu. The museum also holds models of the seventeenth-century devices with which the two are said to have flown.
The Ankara parachute tower was built in 1937 by Turkish and Russian engineers. It stands 41.10 metres high and meets the standards of the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale. Jumps can be made from it between 1 May and 31 October. The jumping deck is on the third floor at 37.90 metres and is reached by stairs or by lift, and there are two winches to hold the jumper's parachute. In suitable weather, healthy people over sixteen weighing between forty-five and ninety kilograms are allowed to jump under the guidance of instructors.
Getting there
- Access
- Public transport running to Ulus reaches it.
When to go
- Climate
- Across Ankara as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from 0.4 °C in January to 23.6 °C in August; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in May, June, July, August and September; rainfall is heaviest in May (52 mm) and lightest in August (13 mm). Long-term means for 1927-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
