city in 1400, after which it was recaptured by the Ottomans in 1408. Under the Ottomans, Sivas served as the administrative center of the province of Rum until about the late nineteenth century.
Sivas Congress (Heyet-iTemiliye) was held in this city 4–11 September 1919. With the arrival of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881–1938), the founder of the Turkish Republic, from Amasya, the Congress of Sivas is considered a turning point in the formation of the Turkish Republic. It was at this congress that Atatürk's position as chair of the executive committee of the national resistance was confirmed (see Turkish War of Independence). Sivas was depicted on the reverse of the Turkish 500 lira banknote of 1927-1939. On 2 July 1993, 37 participants in an Alevi cultural and literary festival were killed when a mob of demonstrators set fire to the Madimak hotel in Sivas during a violent protest by some 15,000 members of various radical Islamistgroups against the presence of Aziz Nesin. The deaths resulted in the Turkish government taking a harder stance against religious fanaticism, militant Islam, and antisecularism. In late 2006 there was a campaign by the Pir Sultan Abdal Cultural Institute to convert the former hotel into a museum to commemorate the tragedy, now known as the Sivas massacre
