Ankara Araştırmaları Dergisi (Dec 2020)
On the 100th Anniversary of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, Supreme Military Command and President of the Assembly Seals of Mustafa Kemal Pasha
Abstract
The First Grand National Assembly Building, Ankara, was the home of the Turkish Parliament between April 23, 1920 and October 18, 1924. The building was then used as the Republican People’s Party headquarters until it was given to the Ministry of National Education in 1952. It was actively used as the First Grand National Assembly Museum between April 23, 1961 and 1981. Following an arrangement made in 1981, the name of the museum was changed to The War of Independence Museum, and it remains so today. There are two seals on permanent exhibition at the museum with the inscriptions “The Supreme Military Command of the Armed Forces of Grand National Assembly of Turkey” and “President of Grand National Assembly of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal”. The first seal commemorates the National Military Campaign during the War of Independence and the second is from the National Assembly of this period. As of the time of writing, the seal of the Supreme Military Command represents the 100th anniversary [2019] of the National Struggle for Independence, and the seal of President of Grand National Assembly represents the 100th anniversary [2020] of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey. The aforementioned seals were cared for from the early 1920s to the 1940s by Recep Peker, one of the most prominent names of the single-party era. In one of his speeches made in the Parliament on April 3, 1942, Peker announced that he held the seals of Mustafa Kemal Pasha’s Supreme Military Command and President of Grand National Assembly. Peker was part of the Representative Committee of 1920 and was promoted to the position of First Secretary upon the founding of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey. His close relationship with Mustafa Kemal Atatürk lasted from February 4, 1920, the date of his arrival in Ankara, until the date of their last meeting on April 5, 1938. Peker is well known for his firm devotion to Atatürk and therefore to Kemalism, and it was this devotion that led him to carefully preserve the aforementioned seals, commemorating the National Campaign for Independence, for more than twenty years. In this article, the story of the preservation, unveiling and display of the Seals of Supreme Military Command and President of Grand National Assembly, which are exhibited in the War of Independence Museum, is investigated.
Keywords
