ABSTRACT
The Ethnographic Museum, Ankara was designed by architect Arif Hikmet Koyunolu and was built between 1925 and 1928. Koyunolu was educated in Istanbul and became an architect during the last years of the Ottoman Empire. Therefore, the building chosen to house Atatrk's temporary tomb the Ethnographic Museum was part of a larger stylistic experiment concentrated in the centre of Ankara to attempt to architecturally represent the young Republic of Turkey. During the 15-year existence of Atatrk's temporary tomb in the Ethnographic Museum, the other exhibits in the museum were only accessible during the same limited opening hours as the tomb, making the tomb, for all intents and purposes, the only reason for the museum. The actual object that was Atatrk's temporary tomb in the Ankara Ethnographic Museum was so minimalistic that it is hard to believe that it represented or symbolized anything. The tomb merely consisted of two main parts: a white marble block and six electrical torches.
