TURKISH PRESIDENCY

Southland Times, Issue 19277, 23 June 1924, Page 6

TURKISH PRESIDENCY

A NATIONAL MONUMENT. The Government has decided to erect a monument of victory opposite the Grand National Assembly. The pedestal will support a bronze figure of Ghazi Mustapha Kemal Pasha, the President of the Republic and round the sides will be bas-reliefs illustrating various phases—not necessarily all military—in the evolution of the nation. Invitations are being issued to Turkish, French, Italian, and German sculptors to submit designs, and prizes, of which the first will be 75,000 francs (£1000), will be awarded for the three best designs. Apparently British sculptors are not being invited to compete, but, on the other hand, it is understood that General Ismet Pasha, the Bash Vekil, recently asked a British engineer to submit plans for the restoration of the Augusteum, which contains the famous copy of the will of the Emperor Augustus (the monumentum Ancyranum) and also for the repair of the beautiful column of Augustus, which has long been crowned with a huge stork’s nest. The inclusion of the statue of the Ghazi in the monument is another illustration of the degree to which the Turkish State has been secularised, as hitherto the erection of statues in Turkey has been formally forbidden as being contrary to the teaching of the Koran.

The first public official departure from the Koranic prohibition of representations of the human figure (which has long been ignored in Egypt and Persia) was made by the Young Turks in 1913, when they issued a postage stamp for £2 bearing an admirable portrait of the then reigning Sultan Reshad.