Atatürk Forest Farm

About this place

When Atatürk bought this stretch of marsh west of Ankara in 1925, the experts he consulted told him nothing would grow there. He planted it anyway, built a model farm with a dairy, a brewery and its own railway siding, and in 1937 handed the whole estate to the state. What you get today is the largest green lung in a capital that has never had much greenery: picnic groves, cafes under ninety-year-old trees, a scatter of 1930s buildings by the Swiss architect Ernst Egli, and, since autumn 2025, crowds again. The reason for the crowds is the Atatürk Children's Natural Life Park, a new zoo opened to the public in September 2025 on roughly a million square metres of farm land, with free entry. The cramped cages of the old zoo, closed more than a decade ago, are gone; in their place are open paddocks for more than fifty species, zebras, llamas, flamingos, deer and ostriches among them, plus the Angora goats named for the city and a farm-animal section where small children can get close to rabbits and goats. Next door is the Digital Zoo, opened in 2024, a hall of projected and virtual-reality animals from ocean life to long-extinct species; it runs on a reservation system, so book a slot through the Ankara municipality before you go and check whether a small ticket applies. Beyond that, three stops are worth the walk. First, an exact replica of the house in Thessaloniki where Atatürk was born, built in 1981 to the original plans and holding some of his personal effects; entry is free. Second, the small farm museum in a 1925 barn, with the farm's first ice-cream machine and the old farm tools, free and open 08:00-17:00 but closed Monday and Tuesday. Third, the old Gazi railway station of 1926, a fine early example of the First National Architecture style, now a restaurant serving traditional dishes. Whatever else you do, leave with a tub of the dairy's ice cream: plain, cardboard-boxed, no clever flavours, and an Ankara habit nobody argues with. The estate is genuinely vast; the distances between house, museum and zoo run to kilometres, so a car helps and parking is plentiful. Without one, take the Başkentray suburban train to Gazi station or a taxi from Kızılay in about fifteen minutes. Paths are paved and pushchairs roll easily. In August Ankara's dry heat climbs past thirty degrees, so do the zoo first thing in the morning; in winter the farm sits under snow and visits turn short and cold. Weekends fill with local families, weekdays are almost empty. And honestly: with one day in Ankara this is not the place to spend it, since Anıtkabir and the Museum of Anatolian Civilisations come first, but it is the best half-day a family with children can have in the capital.