Ulucanlar Prison Museum, Ankara

Ulucanlar Prison Museum, Ankara

The Ulucanlar Prison Museum shows visitors around the rooms of the infamous Ulucanlar Prison where several well-known personalities were once incarcerated.

The Ulucanlar Prison Museum shows visitors around the rooms of the infamous Ulucanlar Prison where several well-known personalities were once incarcerated. Built in 1925 after the birth of the Turkish Republic, the Ulucanlar Prison has confined numerous political prisoners such as Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit and Parliamentary Deputy Osman Bölükbaşı, famous poets such as Nazım Hikmet, Necip Fazıl Kısakürek and Ahmed Arif, and journalists such as Cüneyt Arcayürek and Osman Yüksel Serdengeçti. It has seen the executions of political activists Deniz Gezmiş, Yusuf Aslan and Hüseyin İnan. The museum offers a peek into the grim conditions of the cells, some of which have dioramas and biographies of their prisoners as well as personal belongings and letters. The scaffold where 19 people were executed is also on display in an iron bar cell, with a reminder that capital punishment has been banned in Turkey.