Guide
Başkomutan Historical National Park was declared on 31 August 1981 over the ground where the Great Offensive of 26-30 August 1922 was fought. It is not one continuous area: it comes in two unconnected sections, Kocatepe and Dumlupınar. Kocatepe lies southwest of Afyonkarahisar and takes in the Kocatepe Monument; Dumlupınar reaches into the Altıntaş and Dumlupınar districts of Kütahya and the Banaz district of Uşak. The directorate gives the park as 34,834 hectares, of which the Kocatepe section inside Afyonkarahisar accounts for 17,950.
What people come for is the memorial landscape. Within the Kocatepe section stand the Kocatepe Monument and its inscription, the Başkomutan Mustafa Kemal Monument, the Great Offensive military cemetery, and a long series of smaller cemeteries and memorials — Captain Agah Efendi, Colonel Reşat at Cigiltepe, the Giresun contingent, Calislar, Anitkaya, Yıldırım Kemal, Akdegirmen, Olucak, Gepli, Çamlıca Korusu, the two at Fundalitepe, the cavalry, Ikizkaya and Kocapınar. The Great Offensive headquarters at Şuhut, now the Atatürk House, and the İstiklal interpretation centre are also inside the boundary. The directorate states that 137,000 of the war dead lie in this ground.
The park was not declared only for its history. It preserves examples of steppe ecosystem along with its geology and landforms, and the directorate names the plants it is protecting: the endangered mullein Verbascum lachopus, whose range includes parts of the Kocatepe section, and Erodium absinthoides subsp. absinthoides and Blysmus compressus in the Dumlupınar section. Forest patches here count as an enclave of Black Sea woodland.
Access is unusually easy for a national park, because main roads run straight through it: the Ankara-İzmir highway crosses the park almost end to end, and the Antalya-Afyonkarahisar road cuts the Kocatepe section in two. Visiting is day-use — picnicking, walking the natural footpaths, battlefield touring — and the directorate notes that most visitors come to see the cemeteries. Stated capacity is 1,265 visitors and 90 vehicles, and opening hours are 08:30 to 17:30.
- Designated
- 8.11.1981
