First Bullet Monument

First Bullet Monument

The First Bullet Monument is in Izmir Konak Square, in the area where the Clock Tower is located. The monument was erected in the name of journalist Hasan Tahsin, who fired the first gun to the troops that landed during the Greek army's occupation of Izmir on May 15, 1919, and he was martyred after that. The monument is a symbol of the Turkish resistance against the invaders. Hasan Tahsin completed his higher education in Paris in the School of Political Sciences after he graduated from Thessaloniki Fevziye High School. After that, he joined to the Committee of Union and Progress. He was sentenced to ten years because of bombing and the assassination of British diplomats, Baxiston brothers in Bucharest. He was released a year later by the help of Hilmi Pasha, who visited Bucharest after the outbreak of World War. He settled in Izmir during the armistice years and published articles against colonialism in the newspaper Hukuk-ı Beşer, which he published in Izmir between 1918 and1919. Hasan Tahsin played a role in the preparation of the Declaration of Refusal of Annexation protesting the Greek occupation of Izmir. He fired the first gun, which had a symbolic meaning at the beginning of the War of Independence, to the Greeks proceeding in Izmir's Konak Square and he was martyred in the same place (May 15). The first Bullet Monument was built with the contribution of Izmir Journalists Association and the citizens of Izmir, and it was opened with a ceremony by the then President of the Republic Fahri Korutürk on 15 May 1974.