Monuments to visit Polog And Reka

This fortress (Китино Кале/Kitino Kale) stands on an isolated hill some twenty meters above Kičevo. It was erected by Serbian prince Marko Mrnjavčević in the ^14th century and occupied by the Ottomans until 1860. Only the remains of a tower and a rampart remain. Since 1963, the fortress has housed a major memorial complex designed by Jordan Grabulovski, who also built the Makedonium in Kruševo. At the top, a semicircular ossuary contains the bodies of partisans who liberated the town twice, in 1943 and 1945.

This tower (Саат-Кула/Saat-Kula, Sahat Kulla) stands some 25 m high with a square base, octagonal shaft and wooden top. Built in 1728/1729, it is one of the country's best-preserved towers, used to indicate prayer times to Muslim inhabitants. Next door is the large Ebu-Bekir-Pacha Mosque, also known as the "Clock Mosque", founded in 1676 and rebuilt in 1944, with a minaret 35 m high dating from 1994.

This ^16th-century Ottoman bridge (Еленски Скок Мост/Elenski Skok Most, or Elen Skok Köprüsü in Turkish) owes its name "deer jump" to a legend according to which a deer hunted in Mogorče managed to cross the Mala Reka here, before being cured by the inhabitants of Galičnik. The superb stone arch supports a 23 m-long deck. The structure is said to have been designed by Mimar Hajrudin (c. 1490-1570), the designer of the famous Old Bridge in Mostar (1566), Bosnia-Herzegovina. Today, it is used only by hikers and flocks of sheep.

This memorial (Спомен-Куќа на Али Риза Ефенди/Spomen-Kuḱa na Ali Riza Efendi, Ali Rıza Efendi Anı Evi) was built in 2014 on the supposed site of the family home of Ali Rıza Efendi (1839-1888), the father of Mustafa Kemal, known as Atatürk (c. 1881-1938), who founded the Republic of Turkey in 1923. The site therefore has a certain historical importance for the authorities in Ankara. The Turkish Cooperation and Development Agency (TIKA) financed the work and organized the museography. The small complex comprises two beautiful corbelled houses: an annex and the main dwelling. Both are in the traditional Ottoman style of the region, made of stone and wood... but also with a lot of concrete and modern materials. Five rooms retrace the lives of Atatürk's grandparents, using mannequins, rare period objects and lots of copies of photos, documents, costumes and so on. It's all very kitsch, and accompanied by panels with explanations in English.

The Atatürk myth. According to the official Turkish theory, the original house was destroyed after the departure of the Ottomans in 1912. It would have belonged to Ali Riza Efendi's parents, Kızıl Hafız Ahmet Efendi and Ayşe Hanım. Originally from Karaman, in present-day Turkey, they later moved to Thessalonica, today in Greek Macedonia, in the 1830s. It was in this city that Ali Riza Efendi was born in 1839. While one room shows little Ali playing with his sister, there is no evidence that he ever came to Kodžadžik/Kocacık. He spent his life in Thessalonica. He married Zübeyde Hanım (1856-1923), with whom he had five children, including Mustafa Kemal, and died there at the age of 41, having worked as a customs officer and gone bankrupt in the timber trade. None of this is well explained here. Turkish historians also claim that the site chosen for the reconstruction of the house is the wrong one. This is hardly surprising, given that the Turkish authorities have altered the details of Atatürk's biography in order to build up their myth. In Thessaloniki, for example, the house of Ali Riza Efendi, known as "Atatürk's birthplace", is very popular with Turkish tourists. But this large villa (which also houses a Turkish consulate) is itself a reconstruction. The "Father of the Turks" was not born here, but in another part of the city. The exact date of Atatürk's birth is not known either.