Uğur Mumcu Memorial Park

Small park and memorial to the investigative journalist murdered in 1993

Tucked beside a busy road in central Eskişehir, this small park and bronze memorial commemorate the investigative journalist Uğur Mumcu, killed by a car bomb in Ankara in 1993. The bombing has never been fully solved and remains a totemic case of press murder in modern Turkey.

The park is not a major sight, but it is a thought-provoking stop in a city with otherwise straightforwardly cheerful attractions. Reading the inscription — and the dates of his career writing on organised crime, intelligence services, and extremism — adds some weight to a day of museums.

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Uğur Mumcu was killed by a car bomb outside his Ankara home in January 1993. He had been writing on the links between organised crime, intelligence agencies, and political extremism in Turkey, and his assassination has never been definitively solved. The memorial in Eskişehir — installed by the city — is one of several across the country that mark him as a martyr of press freedom.