Kocaeli Atatürk and Redif Museum

KOCAELİ ATATÜRK, REDIF AND OUR MUSEUM OF ETHNOGRAPHY IS READY TO VISIT WITH ITS NEW EXHIBITION

The first headquarters of the Redif Organization is Izmit. It is stated that the Izmit Redif Office was first built by the Governor of Izmit, Hasan Pasha, during the reign of Sultan Abdulaziz (1861-1876), together with Kasr-ı Humayun. H.17 Ra 1304/M. in the Prime Ministry Ottoman Archives. In the document dated 13 December 1886, it is stated that the warehouse and the adjacent house were burned in the fire that occurred in the military warehouse in İzmir. H. 13 S. 1307/M. In the document dated 8 October 1889, the official opening of the newly built warehouse, arsenal and military service is requested. The inscription of the building is H. 1307/M. It is dated 1889-1890.

The architect of the building is unknown. The warehouse and arsenal behind the building, which is marked on the old city maps and seen in the photograph in Yıldız Photo Albums, does not exist today. The building was used as the Military Court building by the 15th Corps Command until the 1999 earthquake.

The restoration of the building, which was badly damaged in the earthquake, ended in 2011 and was opened to the public as the Atatürk and Redif Museum in 2012. In 2020, due to its structural problems and problems in display windows, it was temporarily closed to visitors in 2020 due to restoration and exhibition-arrangement works. It was reopened to visitors on 06.08.2020 within the scope of the 10th Opening Ceremony attended by our Honorable President Recep Tayyip ERDOĞAN in Kocaeli.

Architectural and Ornamental Features:

The structure, which was built in a masonry system surrounded by courtyard walls, has a rectangular plan in the east-west direction. The single-storey side wings of the building were doubled in the Republican Period. In front of the entrance landing, there are four columns with segmented body and composite caps. The overhang above the entrance sits on the lower columns. Rectangular-span windows are placed on the street-facing walls of the exit, in line with the openings below. The protruding entrance axis on the façade is also emphasized vertically with a rectangular inscription with the Ottoman coat of arms above. On the walls one step behind the entrance axis, two windows with rectangular openings are lined up on the same axis on each floor. The courtyard walls surrounding the building are in the form of a semicircle in the north, at the level of the entrance to the building. In the middle of this section is the entrance door to the courtyard. In the original, the Ottoman coat of arms with the inscription "The Ottoman Military Office" on the front of the lintel is not available today. The other door entering the courtyard is in the southeast. Apart from its massive design and simple façade arrangement, the İzmit Redif Apartment, dated to the end of the 19th century, is a typical example of the Empire style, which was preferred in public buildings built in these years, with its Neo-Classical column capitals, parapet top cover, inscriptions with the Ottoman coat of arms. The ceiling decorations in the interior of the building also bear the taste of the 19th century.

Artifacts Exhibited in the Museum

• The most outstanding example of the 19th century Hereke carpet,
• Artifacts belonging to traditional carpet weaving culture,
• Information about Kara Fatma, İpsiz Recep and Yahya Kaptan, the immortalized heroes of the national struggle period,
• Photographs and names of the hero who was martyred in the national struggle in June 1921,
• Silicone statue representing the Redif soldier, information, documents and belongings of the Redif organization,
• Ottoman period weapons,
• Clocks, candlesticks, bath utensils, kitchen and coffee utensils, various textile artifacts, women's and men's clothes belonging to the distinguished ethnographic culture of the Ottoman Empire,
• The oldest Ottoman Tombstone (1493) found in Kocaeli until today,
• Silicone statue representing the moment when Atatürk came to Izmit in 1923 in his military uniform,
• In addition to information about Kocaeli's intangible cultural heritage, examples of Kocaeli's traditional handicrafts such as Kandıra cloth, Karamürsel Sepeti, Kandıra Chest and Nüzhetiye rag dolls,
• Subjects such as the story of the pizzeria, which is a type of halva that is identified with Kocaeli, are presented to our visitors within the scope of contemporary museology.