Postcard from İzmir

Tucked away in the backstreets of İzmir’s Konak neighborhood lies the modest house where İsmet İnönü was born in 1884. İsmet’s early life was full of wanderings throughout Anatolia, thanks to his father’s changing judicial postings, his military schooling in Sivas, and his family ties to Malatya, but İzmir remained both the place of his birth and a beloved summer destination in his teenage years. To highlight this connection, the İnönü Foundation turned this house into a small museum in 1999. While in İzmir this summer, I luckily learned about this underpublicized museum and found my way there from the sprawling Kemeraltı market via İzmir’s helpfully numbered streets (head south on the meandering 848 Sokak, left on 442, right on İnönü Sokak which was previously known as 842).

Most of İzmir is either entirely flat or intensely hilly, and the walk to the museum exemplifies this: it is level until you get to İnönü Sokak, which transforms into a staircase as it climbs the steep slope. The street is pretty, with flowering plants, cats napping or eating the tidy piles of cat food left for them on the sidewalk, and several Ottoman-era cumba (windowed balconies) with ornate cast iron supports. The museum was locked when I arrived but upon ringing the doorbell, a woman let me in. If the guestbook was accurate, I was the first person to have visited in five days.

The museum has a split purpose, with some rooms telling İsmet’s story in a familiar museum-like fashion and others having been left as they were over a century ago. The kitchen is the best of the latter, looking like it could still be used to cook the family recipes shown on one of the room’s interpretive panels. These panels are written in both Turkish and English and the text is less nationalist than what is found at many other Turkish museums, including İzmir’s own Ataturk Museum and the İzmir Museum of History and Art. Somewhat disappointingly for scholars of Lausanne, the negotiations are discussed but not at length. It does appear that there was a recent exhibit about Lausanne at the museum, but it is no longer on display. There is also an exhibit on the Aloïs Derso and Emery Kelèn caricatures of the conference, familiar from the cover of The Lausanne Project’s They All Made Peace-What is Peace?

Beyond the limited Lausanne coverage, the recounting of İsmet’s life is meticulous, giving quite a few unexpected details. Visitors learn, for example, where he was circumcised (Malatya). There are several displays that give further insight into Ismet’s personal life, the best being the panel focusing on a few letters between him and his wife, Emine Mevhibe. In these, they discussed their son’s head injury and ponder whether they were still in love. An exhibit about the development and use of radio in the early Republic was also an intriguing and excellent choice by the curators. Visitors should not come to this museum expecting a critical appraisal of İsmet (such appraisals are rare at any museum), but it is a pleasant and informative place in a quiet İzmir neighborhood. It is worthwhile for historians and non-historians alike, and provides valuable insight into one of Lausanne’s most important figures.

IMAGES COURTESY ANDREW PATRICK.