ABSTRACT
The memories of both the man Mustafa Kemal Atatrk and the memories of the nation Turkey are tied together in the funerary architecture for Atatrk, as politicized by the successive governments and citizens of Turkey since Atatrk's death in 1938. The way that Dolmabahe Palace was appropriated to serve as the space where Atatrk died, the way that Atatrk's funeral were based on Western and not traditional Ottoman customs, and the way that Antkabir bypasses Turkey's Ottoman past and draws from earlier Seljuk, Hittite and Hellenic eras, in addition to vernacular or folk traditions that are seen as timeless, are all examples of forgetting the Ottoman Empire. Atatrk's mausoleum, Antkabir, concluded the narrative of his funerary architecture with a monumental design whose location is both literally and figuratively in the heart of Ankara and the Turkish nation. Atatrk's mausoleum was always planned to be or to have a museum component since its inception, as seen in the competition brief.
