This monument on Independence Road honors Martyr Şerife Bacı, a Turkish heroine who died in the Turkish War of Independence. According to estimates, Şerife was born in 1900 and raised in a village in the Seydiler district. Şerife got married at sixteen, but after several months, her husband died in a battle during WW1. The villages arranged for her to marry a war veteran, and after two years, she gave birth to their daughter. During the Greco-Turkish War in December of 1921, ammunition was needed to get transported to the front. Şerife took her nine-month-old daughter, and together with a group of women, transported cannonballs on her oxen-driven tumbrel from İnebolu to Ankara. Şerife kept her daughter warm on the oxcarts from the severe winter conditions but unfortunately froze to death before the Kastamonu Barracks. Şerife Bacı’s sacrifice for the country has made her a symbol of heroism. This monument is one of the several memorials that have been erected in her honor in Turkey. Tankut Öktem created it in 1990, depicting Şerife Bacı walking in the front, carrying a rifle, holding a walking stick in her left arm, and her oxen-driven tumbrel in her right. Other martyrs are depicted behind her, including Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the leader and founding father of the Republic of Turkey. Read more...