Guide
The Police Museum was founded on 9 April 2021 in the Ayrancı quarter of the Çankaya district of Ankara, with the status of a private museum, under the social services and health department of the General Directorate of Security.
A police museum was first planned in the Ottoman period, in 1911, within the police school in İstanbul. The work was broken off because of the war, though documents and records show that by 1917 uniforms and equipment that had been gathered were on display at the İstanbul directorate. The effort that began during the First World War was thus carried through 104 years later with the museum opened in 2021.
What is shown here are the stages the police organisation has passed through from the Ottoman empire to the present, the ways the police have gone about fighting crime while keeping the internal security of the country, the incidents that occurred and the equipment used.
The museum is in six parts. Display areas A, B and C tell the place of the Turkish police in history: uniforms of earlier periods, the formation of the Ottoman police, models of Ottoman police posts, a chronology of policing, notable officers who served, detective fiction in Turkish literature, the first fingerprint, the founding of the first mounted bicycle unit, and weapons. Fifty-six historic and current uniforms are shown on hyper-realistic silicone mannequins, along with re-enactments, accessories, model dioramas, documentary films, historic and current police motorcycles, police cars and a police helicopter.
Section D holds re-enactment areas for forensic work and bomb disposal, an introduction to police dogs, an area laid out for teaching traffic rules with a game to go with it, a souvenir counter, the police library and social areas.
Section E holds current police equipment and uniforms, belongings and identity tags of officers who lost their lives on duty, an area given to 15 July, historic documents and photographs, and gifts sent by the police forces of other countries. Section F shows armoured police vehicles in the open air.
