Gençlik Parkı, Youth Park

Gençlik Parkı, “Youth Park” is in Ulus District, which was once the most lively place in Ankara. Nowadays, it’s only for locals and tourists. Gençlik Parkı is a good example of the projects for building a capital city from the scratch. The construction of the park started in 1936, however it was finished and opened to public in 1943. The Western style of 30′s was chosen for the park, so you can still see the horrible wannabe-Roman and Nazi style monuments today.

Of course, built for the Republic and modern Turkey, the park was opened on the National Youth and Sports Day, May 19. If you wonder how I can remember these dates, everyone does in Turkey, no biggie! What disappointed me was the park was not green at all! There were pools in different sizes which gave the feeling of a sports camp.

Even though the park is quite big, it was packed with people and there was nothing peaceful about it. I liked the artificial river, and sat by it for a while. I think it is pretty sad that the city has an ugly park. It feels like there is no place to breath in Ankara since it’s not geographically located somewhere green and no one really tried to make the city green. Adding the rapid urbanization and the problems such as traffic and shanty housing related to that, Ankara rather stands as a bad model than once being the example for cities such as Sao Paulo. I think today we can compare and contrast these two cities about the negative effects/outcomes of urbanization.

This was the best view in the park, so I sat in a cafe by the water for a while. I could see the Luna Park from where I was sitting so I decided to turn back to my childhood and enjoy some of the toys there. I had heard that there was a light performance during the night, so I had to choose between the Luna Park and the light performance. I decided to go to the Luna Park first!

Balloons and cotton candy! Actually I wasn’t a kid who had interest in Luna Parks. I never cried for balloons or candies. My favorite in the Luna Parks was bumper cars! I also enjoyed the chamber of horrors quite a lot! This time I started with Ferris Wheel which was called Ankara Güneşi, “Ankara Sun”- so it’s not Ankara Eye. By the way, the entrance for the park was 25 kuruş, it is like 10 cents! So, you can imagine how packed it was. I had to wait in lines for 10-15 minutes for each toy.

I decided that Ankara looks better during the night time since all the streets have nice lightnings. The darkness covers the ugly state buildings and you only see the shining trees and nice old buildings. In the beginning, it felt weird to be there as an adult and sober (! ) but after a while I became a Luna Park monster. You should have seen me at the bumper cars. I definitely pissed some kids off!