Kocatepe and Dumlupınar Battle Sites

The Kocatepe and Dumlupınar battle sites preserve the landscape of the decisive military engagement that ended the Turkish War of Independence and expelled Greek forces from Anatolia in August 1922. Kocatepe is a strategic hilltop approximately 50 kilometres south-west of Afyonkarahisar city where Mustafa Kemal Atatürk personally directed the opening bombardment of the Great Offensive at 4:30 AM on 26 August 1922. From this elevated vantage point, Atatürk observed the artillery barrage that broke through Greek lines and launched the assault that would sweep across western Anatolia in five days. The hilltop is marked by observation points and memorial markers identifying the positions of the Turkish high command during the opening hours of the offensive. The Dumlupınar battlefield lies approximately 30 kilometres further west, near the town of Dumlupınar in Kütahya province, where the encirclement and destruction of the main Greek army was completed on 30 August 1922 — the engagement now commemorated annually as Zafer Bayramı (Victory Day). The wider Başkomutan Historical National Park encompasses the Dumlupınar area, including monuments, the Zafer Panorama museum and military cemeteries on both the Turkish and Greek sides. A road links the Kocatepe hilltop to the broader battlefield area, and the sites receive school groups and patriotic visitors throughout the year. The open terrain of the Phrygian plateau around the sites preserves the general character of the 1922 landscape, giving visitors an immediate physical sense of the scale of the offensive across this high, treeless country.