Kurtuluş Parkı

About Kurtuluş Parkı

Kurtuluş Parkı is a large green space in Fidanlık Mahallesi, between Kızılay and Cebeci, and one of the first green areas of the Republican era in Ankara. Its land was expropriated in 1931 and planted as a tree nursery for the greening of the young capital, the city's second after the Atatürk Orman Çiftliği nursery of 1928. Saplings raised here were sent to villages and to neighbouring provinces. Part of the area was turned into a park in 1935, and the İncesu stream that ran along it served children of the surrounding neighbourhoods as a summer swimming spot. The park was cut by Ziya Gökalp Caddesi in the 1950s; between 1961 and 1963 a 110,000-square-metre park was created and opened to the public in 1963 as Kurtuluş Parkı, named after the Kurtuluş neighbourhood it then belonged to. It officially became a park in 1980, was declared a first-degree natural protected site in 1994 and was redesigned in 2000. Turkish Wikipedia gives its present area as 86,200 square metres, with 49,000 square metres of lawn, a 2,000-square-metre pool, a picnic area, children's playgrounds and sports areas. The tree collection is rich in woody species, including three holm oaks, a tree of the Mediterranean and Aegean coasts not expected to grow in Ankara, and a registered monumental tree. Look out for Selim Turan's Sarıkız statue, put up in 1993: a figure of thin copper plates on a 12-metre plinth, mounted on bearings so that it turns in the wind. Turkey's first artificial ice rink opened inside the park in 1981, and a wedding hall and a health centre for street animals also stand within it.