In the center of Amasya, in Yavuz Selim Square on the bank of the Yeşilırmak, stands an Atatürk monument that is usually called simply the Atatürk Monument by the townspeople and, in some publications, the "Amasya Declaration Monument" (Amasya Tamimi Anıtı). The work of the sculptor Tankut Öktem, it was completed in 1981 and is one of the best-known examples in Turkey of a monument that, instead of leaving Atatürk alone at the top of a pedestal, surrounds him with a crowd of people. The monument gathers into a single mass Mustafa Kemal, who came to the town in the summer of 1919, and those who welcomed him. The Amasya Declaration itself, that is, the drafting of the document and its text, is a separate subject. Here the events of 1919 are recalled only so far as the monument stages them. The main story is how the monument came into being, whose hands made it, which figures it is composed of and what place it has taken in the city.

The Square and Its Surroundings

The monument stands at one of the busiest points in Amasya. Yavuz Selim Square lies right beside the Government Bridge (Hükümet or Helkıs Köprüsü) over the Yeşilırmak, at the foot of the rise on which the Gümüşlü Mosque stands. Because the Government House, the clock tower and the bridge stand close to one another, the area counts as one of the most prominent meeting points of the town's public life. Since it is within walking distance of the bazaar, the bridges and the riverbank, the monument is seen together with the town's other landmarks. On the section of the southern bank of the Yeşilırmak laid out as the Princes' Way (Şehzadeler Yolu) stand statues of the geographer Strabo and of several princes.

The most conspicuous neighbor of the square is the Clock Tower. Standing on the west side of the Government Bridge, the tower was built in 1865 by Ziya Paşa, the poet and governor (mutasarrıf) of Amasya, was damaged by fire soon afterwards, was demolished in 1940 when the adjoining wooden bridge was rebuilt in reinforced concrete, and was reconstructed faithfully to the original in 2002. A cylindrical brick body rises on a square base of regular cut stone. The upper section that holds the clock faces, the so-called honeycomb, is in two tiers and entirely of timber. In appearance the structure recalls a minaret. Monument and tower face each other at opposite ends of the square. One is the mark left by an Ottoman governor of the nineteenth century, the other by a state artist of the last quarter of the twentieth, and they enter the same frame.

The closeness of the Government House to the square is meaningful in historical terms as well. On the evening of 12 June 1919 Mustafa Kemal made his first speech to the people of Amasya in one of the halls of this building. That the first gathering after the welcome staged by the monument took place a few hundred meters away seems also to explain why the monument was placed in this square.

The layers of history around the square reach back further still. The first construction of the Gümüşlü Mosque, which looks down on the square from above, is attributed to Taceddin Mahmud Çelebi in 1326 and the second, in 1491, to Defterdar Mahmut Bey. The building was repaired after the earthquake of 1419 and the fires of 1612 and 1721, and took its name from Gümüşlüzade İbrahim Bey, who paid for the repair of 1688. The district is known among the townspeople as Selağzı. According to a footnote in an article by Mevhibe Savaş, the name comes from the stream that runs past the site of the Sinan Paşa Bath, the Gümüşlü Mosque and the shrine of Kesikbaş Evliyası. According to the same article, in 1919 the people of Amasya gathered in the Atik-i Âli school on the Selağzı square and founded the Association for the Defense of Rights. The monument has thus been placed not in an arbitrary empty space but in a district already heavy with memory.

The name of the square refers to Selim I (Selim the Grim), who served as prince-governor in Amasya. The madrasa where he is said to have begun his schooling was also in this neighborhood. Amasya stands first among the towns where Ottoman princes were trained as sanjak governors, and among those who served as princes here and later took the throne are Bayezid I, Mehmed I (Çelebi Mehmed), Murad II, Mehmed II (the Conqueror), Bayezid II, Selim I and Murad III. Wax figures of these sultans are displayed on the upper floor of the Princes' Mansion (Şehzadeler Konağı) on the bank of the Yeşilırmak. The square thus carries two different memories at once. Its name recalls the Ottoman princely tradition, and the monument at its center the struggle for liberation at the beginning of the twentieth century.

The Competition and the Making

The first step of the monument was a sculpture competition. In the list on Tankut Öktem's own website, the Amasya Declaration Monument appears as a first prize won in 1974. His first prize in the Mersin National Forces (Kuvayi Milliye) Monument competition, from the same year, is in the same list. His biographies note that the three first prizes he won in the sculpture competitions held for the fiftieth anniversary of the Republic opened the way for him to bring his monuments, at an ever larger scale, into the Republic squares. In the same years he won first prize in the Kırkpınar competition in Edirne (1973) and in the Mersin and Amasya competitions. In the list of executed works, by contrast, the Amasya piece carries the date 1981. The design was therefore carried out about seven years after the competition. No document that explains the reason for this interval is available.

There is a small discrepancy in the sources about the date of construction. In one sentence of the report on the 2023 restoration by the Amasya Municipality the monument is described as "built in 1982", while elsewhere in the same text 1981 is given, and the headline of the report calls the monument "42 years old". The sculptor's own list, the press reports of 2014 and the great majority of other writings on the monument take 1981 as the basis. Since there may have been a gap of about a year between the making and the installation in the square, some writers give the date as 1981-1982. Here 1981 is adopted.

The years in which the monument was made were also a busy period in Öktem's career. From 1980 to 1982 he served as director of the Istanbul State School of Applied Fine Arts, and in the same period he produced works for the Turkish Military Academy, the Tuzla Infantry School and the Ministry of National Education in Ankara. The Head Teacher statue and the Mehmed the Conqueror Monument in Istanbul also date from 1981. The 24-meter Atatürk and Cadet Monument in front of the Military Academy in Ankara was begun in the same year, and this large work was completed in 1988. The Amasya monument is one of the products of this intensive period of production, in the years when the sculptor was directing the school.

The Sculptor: Tankut Öktem

The sources differ on Tankut Öktem's place and year of birth. Some give 1940 and Konya, while the artist's own website gives 1941 and Istanbul. He spent the first six years of his childhood in Muş and a later part of it in Edirne. According to his biography, when he fell ill in Muş at the age of three he made his first sculpture from plasticine brought by his uncle, and he was chosen as a "wonder child" while still small. Because of his father's concern that his son should be only a sculptor, he also graduated from the Faculty of Economics of Istanbul University, finishing both schools together. In his third year at the State School of Applied Fine Arts he won first prize in the World Young Sculptors Competition. In 1962 he did an internship at the Schönwald Porcelain Factory in Germany, in 1965 he completed the ceramics department of the State School of Applied Fine Arts in Istanbul, and a year later he became an assistant at the same school. In 1970 he moved to a teaching post and in 1974-1975 he served as head of the ceramics department. After the school was attached to Marmara University, he founded the sculpture department in 1983-1985 and became its first head. He became a professor in 1986 and a State Artist in 1999, and he died on 5 December 2007 in a traffic accident in Istanbul.

Until 1973 Öktem made modern sculptures with an abstract leaning, turned in the seventies to figurative work out of the need to earn a living, and from 1973 onward began producing multi-figure monuments. He became known for these monuments on Atatürk and the War of Independence. Among them are the Kırkpınar Monument in Edirne (1973), the Republic Monument in Orhangazi, Bursa (1977), the Atatürk and National Sovereignty Monument in Manisa (1985) and the Atatürk and Martyr Şerife Bacı Monument in Kastamonu (1990). Abroad, at the art event held for the 1988 Seoul Olympics he was named among the ten best living sculptors from the artists of 162 countries and made the Monument of Love in front of the Seoul Cultural Center. In 1990 he took first place at a sculpture symposium in Böblingen, Germany. In Northern Cyprus he has works such as the Freedom Monument in Famagusta, the Atatürk Statue in Kyrenia and the Fazıl Küçük Statue in Nicosia. His other works abroad are the Atatürk Bust in Budapest (1996) and a 35-meter victory monument in the name of the Libyan national hero Ghazi Muhtar (1997). In Turkey, the Miner's Monument in Zonguldak (1986), the Turgut Reis Statue in Bandırma (1986) and the Atatürk and Youthful Aviators Monument at the Air Force Academy (1980) bear his signature. After 1983 he took part in no more competitions and served only as a jury member.

The artist had set up his studio at Küçük Kumla, in the Gemlik district of Bursa, on a bay surrounded by olive groves. After his death his family arranged the studio as the Tankut Öktem Museum House, where retrospective exhibitions of his work have continued to be held. A saying of his reported in writings about him seems to explain the crowds in his monuments: "The heroes of life were important to me. Anyone who had earned life with honor and achieved it with love could have a statue made."

The Composition

In the Amasya monument Atatürk is depicted on horseback above the pedestal, surrounded by numerous human figures. Most of the narrative is gathered around the pedestal and on its front face. Öktem's choice here, as in his other Atatürk monuments, is to show the hero together with the society he created rather than alone. A visitor looking from close by tries to identify the figures one by one, while one looking from a distance reads the scene as a people gathered around a leader.

According to the analysis reported by Hüseyin Menç on the basis of a booklet printed by the Amasya Governorship, the figures on the pedestal depict the condition of Anatolia before the War of Independence, the grief of the aged parents of a martyr, a young couple who are leaving to join the struggle at their side, the awakening of the spirit of the National Forces and the founding of the army. On the front face are figures representing the mufti of the time who received Atatürk when he came to Amasya in 1919, the preacher, and the members of the delegation that came to the town with Atatürk. Sources listing Öktem's works state that Preacher Abdurrahman Kâmil Efendi and Mufti Hacı Hafız Efendi stand to Atatürk's right and left. In the municipality's restoration statement, too, the two clergymen at the front are named as Mufti Hacı Hafız Efendi and Preacher Abdurrahman Kamil. In some texts the mufti's name is shortened to Hafız Efendi alone, in others to Tevfik Efendi. In all of them the same person, Hacı Hafız Tevfik Efendi, is meant.

The monument thus builds a two-layered narrative. The front face holds the memory of particular people and a particular day, while the pedestal holds the condition of a nameless people before and during the war. Types such as the villager, the soldier and the mother are seen in many monuments. In Amasya, however, Öktem has brought forward local figures with known names who stood at Atatürk's side in the first days of 1919. In this way the monument becomes a scene more than a portrait and acquires a meaning specific to Amasya.

The Day the Monument Recalls: 12 June 1919

Mustafa Kemal landed at Samsun on 19 May 1919 and, after his stay in Havza, reached Amasya on 12 June. Amasya was the first town he visited after Samsun. The place of the welcome appears under different names in the sources. According to the description of the scene recreated in today's museum, the party was received at around 17:00 that day at the Cülüstepe locality by a delegation from Amasya. The accounts based on Hüseyin Menç's book and the memoirs reported by Mevhibe Savaş, on the other hand, place the welcome at Gezirlik. According to Menç's account, as dusk was about to fall Mustafa Kemal stepped out of the car and reached to kiss the hand of the aged preacher Abdurrahman Kâmil Efendi, who answered "God forbid, my son the pasha" and embraced him. Mufti Hacı Hafız Tevfik Efendi took Mustafa Kemal's hand and said, "My pasha, may your holy war be blessed." It is from this scene that one understands which moment the figures on the front of the monument freeze.

According to the same account, after entering the town Mustafa Kemal went to the Government House and, after the iftar meal, addressed the people of Amasya in one of its halls. He said that the sultan and the government were captives in the hands of the Entente powers, and took a pledge from those present that the homeland would be defended to its last rock against any attack by the enemy. On Friday 13 June, Abdurrahman Kâmil Efendi delivered at the Sultan Bayezid Mosque a sermon calling the congregation to resistance, and Mustafa Kemal listened to him from the gallery to the right of the congregation. No minuted text of these speeches exists. The sentences in circulation rest on the accounts in Menç's book Milli Mücadele Yıllarında Amasya, published in 1992, and should be read with that in mind.

Mustafa Kemal stayed in Amasya for fourteen days. He spent the first night at the Government House and the following days at the Saraydüzü Barracks, the headquarters of the 5th Caucasus Division. One room of the barracks was fitted out as a telegraph office, and from there telegrams were sent on 15 June to the Governorship of Diyarbakır and on 18 June to Cafer Tayyar Bey, commander of the First Army in Edirne. On 14 June the Amasya Association for the Defense of Rights was founded. On 17 June the British High Commissioner demanded Mustafa Kemal's recall, on 18 June the Ministry of the Interior banned the founding of associations for the defense of rights and the sending of telegrams, and in response Mustafa Kemal ordered the seizure of the post offices on 20 June. On 19 June Hüseyin Rauf Bey and Ali Fuat Paşa arrived in Amasya, and Refet Bele also joined the talks. On 20 June a rally attended by some thirty thousand people was held in the town.

The Amasya Circular (Amasya Genelgesi), drawn up on the night of 21-22 June, was sent by telegraph to all civil administrators and military commanders on 22 June 1919. The text states that the integrity of the homeland and the independence of the nation are in danger and that the Istanbul government is unable to fulfill its responsibility, and it sets out its principle in the sentence "The independence of the nation will again be saved by the resolve and determination of the nation." The convening of a national congress in Sivas was also decided by this document. Mustafa Kemal left Amasya for Tokat on the morning of 26 June, while it was still dark. The monument in the square stages the beginning of these fourteen days, that is, the welcome into the town. The document itself was born at Saraydüzü.

The Saraydüzü Barracks were built in 1898-1900 on the site of the palace where Ottoman princes had lived for centuries and which had collapsed in 1883 through neglect and earthquakes. The barracks were partly destroyed in 1935 and completely pulled down in 1944, and the military housing and officers' club built in their place were in turn evacuated and demolished in 1986 because of the danger of landslides. In 1997 it was decided to rebuild the structure, and because the old site carried a landslide risk a faithful copy was built at the entrance of the Şamlar neighborhood. Completed in 2007, the building today houses the National Struggle Museum and a library. Some sources date its opening to 2009. In the museum the scene carved in stone in the square is recreated once more with wax figures: the welcome of Mustafa Kemal and his party by the people of Amasya.

The Figures at the Front: Mufti and Preacher

The life stories of the two clergymen in the monument help us understand why the composition gives place to these names. Hacı Hafız Tevfik Efendi was born in Amasya, received a madrasa education, served as chief clerk of the Sharia Court and was appointed mufti of Amasya at the end of 1918. His year of birth appears in the sources as 1866 or 1868 (1282 in the Islamic calendar). According to the memoirs reported by Savaş, Mustafa Kemal received a favorable reply from him to the telegram he sent from Havza, and when he arrived in the town the mufti, the preacher, the notables and the people welcomed him. Hüsrev Gerede, who was at his side, recalls the mufti's welcoming speech as the first fatwa of the National Struggle. In the memoirs of Major Cemil Cahit Toydemir it is said that in those days the mufti was the commander and he himself his chief of staff. He also served as head of the Amasya Association for the Defense of Rights and was one of the leading figures in the town's open support for Mustafa Kemal in the summer of 1919. Hacı Tevfik Efendi was in the field at the head of the militia during the suppression of the Zile revolt and died of pneumonia in November 1921.

Preacher Abdurrahman Kâmil (Yetkin) Efendi was born in Amasya in 1849, studied at the Mehmed Paşa Madrasa, served as preacher at the Sultan Bayezid Mosque and became mufti of Amasya in 1900. He retired because of age on 1 September 1915, and in 1921, upon the death of Hafız Tevfik Efendi, he was appointed mufti again for life by order of Mustafa Kemal and remained in that post until his death on 31 December 1941. According to a grandson's account in Savaş's article, when Atatürk stopped at Amasya on his way to Tokat on 19 September 1928 and stepped down from the train, his first words were "Where is the Mufti Efendi?" Savaş reports that on the night of Mustafa Kemal's arrival in Amasya, Abdurrahman Kâmil Efendi visited him, and that the next Friday he changed the subject of his sermon to the salvation of the homeland, putting the congregation gathered in the mosque's courtyard at more than thirty thousand. The same article records that the first material aid to the Association for the Defense of Rights was five gold coins that he handed over wrapped in a handkerchief. When Mustafa Kemal came back to the town five years later, he singled out this preacher's guiding speech in Amasya's awakening. Most of this information rests on memoirs and later narratives, and the documentary accuracy of each has not been separately tested.

The Axe-Bearer Dispute

The element that has raised the most questions in the monument is the man holding an axe among the figures on the pedestal. Because Amasya saw no occupation in 1919 apart from the brief British occupation of Merzifon between 15 March and 28 September, how the axe came to enter the composition has been a matter of curiosity. The subject reached the local and national press in January 2014. In an article published in a newspaper, the historian Ahmet Demirel, after mentioning the two clergymen in the monument, claimed that the axe-bearing figure depicts Gabaş Ali, a man named in connection with the violence against the Armenians of Amasya in 1915. This name is listed in the footnote of an article of 1997 among those whose statues stand in the monument at Selağzı. The footnote, however, does not say which figure is meant, and no record has been produced showing that the person named is the same as the axe-bearer.

The Amasya researcher and writer Hüseyin Menç objected to this claim. Recalling that he had also discussed the monument in his 1992 book Milli Mücadele Yıllarında Amasya, Menç said that whom the axe-bearing figure represents is not established in official records and archives, and that the name does not appear in the publications printed by the Amasya Governorship either. In his view the figure represents Atatürk's saying from the years of the National Struggle, meaning "if necessary we will take up axes and go to war that way." The booklet on which Menç relies describes the pedestal figures as nameless social types. Within this framework the axe-bearer, too, is interpreted as a type that represents no particular person and symbolizes the people's will to resist. Local travel writing on the monument likewise says that the identity is not known with certainty, that the claim is unproven and that the more realistic interpretation rests on this saying. Since no statement by the sculptor himself or document from the commission file has come to light, the two readings stand side by side. As neither has been confirmed by documents, neither is accepted as true here, and the existence of the dispute is recorded as it stands.

Naming

The monument appears in the sources under different names. Some publications call it the Amasya Declaration Statue (Amasya Tamim Heykeli), others the Amasya Declaration Monument, and others simply the Amasya Atatürk Monument. In the sculptor's list of works the name is "Amasya Tamimi Anıtı", while the municipality's restoration announcement and press reports say "Atatürk Anıtı". The variety of names shows that the structure is perceived as a monument that commemorates both Atatürk and the step taken in the town in 1919. No official registration or inauguration document that gave the monument its name has been seen in the written sources.

Maintenance and Restoration

Because it is one of the most visible public works in the city, the monument has been affected by weather and by wear over the years. In October 2023 teams of the Amasya Municipality put the monument through maintenance and repair under the supervision of sculptors and completed the painting. Mayor Bayram Çelik thanked the sculptors who carried out the work and presented them with a plaque. In the same statement Çelik recalled that Öktem preferred to show Atatürk together with the society he created rather than alone, and described the monument as a symbol of the town where the first torch of the Republic was lit. The report gives no technical detail on the scope of the repair, and the materials and methods used are not stated.

The Monument's Place in the City

The monument is the stopping point of the town's official commemorations. On the anniversaries of Mustafa Kemal's arrival on 12 June and of the Amasya Circular, wreaths are laid here. In 2021, as part of the celebrations of the 102nd anniversary of the circular, an official opening ceremony was held in the square, a theater performance on Mustafa Kemal's arrival in the town on 12 June 1919 and the support the people of Amasya gave him was staged, and the military band of the Samsun Field Medical School Command then gave a concert of marches. In 2022, on the 103rd anniversary, the welcome at Cülüstepe was re-enacted by theater actors, and after the procession, at the ceremony in Yavuz Selim Square, wreaths of the governorship, the garrison command and the municipality were laid at the monument, a moment of silence was observed and the national anthem was sung.

Apart from these ceremonies, Yavuz Selim Square is one of the places in Amasya where collective events are held. Events such as the 15 July commemoration program, the Day of the Elderly march and the primary education week celebrations have taken place in this square. The monument therefore serves as a backdrop that stands within the daily flow and, on such days, stays behind the crowd.

It is also a fixed point for photographers. Together with the riverside mansions strung along the Yeşilırmak, the bridge, the Clock Tower and the rocky cliffs rising behind, the monument forms one of the frequently used frames of the images that present Amasya.

Chronology

1326: First construction of the Gümüşlü Mosque (Taceddin Mahmud Çelebi).

1865: The Clock Tower is built by the governor Ziya Paşa.

1898-1900: A barracks is built at Saraydüzü on the site of the collapsed princes' palace.

19 May 1919: Mustafa Kemal lands at Samsun.

12 June 1919: Mustafa Kemal and his party arrive in Amasya and are welcomed; in the evening he addresses the people of Amasya at the Government House.

13 June 1919: Preacher Abdurrahman Kâmil Efendi delivers his sermon of resistance at the Sultan Bayezid Mosque.

14 June 1919: The Amasya Association for the Defense of Rights is founded.

22 June 1919: The Amasya Declaration (Circular) is communicated to all civil and military authorities.

26 June 1919: Mustafa Kemal leaves Amasya for Tokat.

1921: Mufti Hacı Hafız Tevfik Efendi dies and Abdurrahman Kâmil Efendi is appointed mufti again.

1940: The Clock Tower is demolished during the renewal of the bridge.

1944: The Saraydüzü Barracks are completely pulled down.

1974: Tankut Öktem's design wins first prize in the Amasya Declaration Monument competition.

1981: The monument is completed in Yavuz Selim Square (1982 in one record).

2002: The Clock Tower is rebuilt faithfully to the original.

2007: The copy of the Saraydüzü Barracks is completed. Tankut Öktem dies on 5 December.

2014: The identity of the axe-bearing figure is debated in the press.

2023: The monument undergoes maintenance and repair by the Amasya Municipality.

Bibliography

Academic studies

  • Sinan Meydan, "Atatürk'ün Özgürlük Bildirisi: Amasya Genelgesi", Sözcü, 2017. amasya.gov.tr

Official sources

Books

Other sources

Online sources