İsmet Pasha begins his tour of the East
On September 23, 1932, Prime Minister İsmet Pasha embarked upon a two-week tour of the East. A crowded group of spectators saw him off from Ankara. As he boarded the train, İsmet Pasha said to the crowd, “The outbound are always more cheerful that the inbound.”
Following visits to Kilis, Gaziantep, Birecik, Urfa, Siverek, Diyarbakır, and Elazığ, the Prime Minister arrived at Kömürhan near Malatya on October 5th and inaugurated the İsmetpaşa Bridge built over River Fırat (Euphrates). This 164 meter-long bridge was, at the time, the longest reinforced concrete bridge to have been built in Turkey. Gazi Mustafa Kemal had requested the bridge to be named İsmetpaşa. İsmet Pasha’s extended tour of the country ended in İstanbul on October 11th after stops at Malatya, Viranşehir, Maraş, Kayseri, Konya, Adana, and Afyonkarahisar.
To those who came to welcome him in İstanbul, İsmet Pasha said that he was thrilled with the public’s “natural and enthusiastic disposition for progress, civilization, and advancement.”
