Heart of Turkey Anıtkabir

Atatürk's picture is on every single piece of Turkish currency, his visage hangs in only about every office and official building within the country, and his principles and ideas are the foundations of recent Turkish political thought. So his vast mausoleum, perched on a hilltop overlooking the capital city he built, is on a scale suitable to his stature in Turkey. A marble promenade flanked with Hittite-style lions ends up in the imposing mausoleum, where a large sarcophagus lies beyond a colonnade with inscriptions from his speeches and below a ceiling of brilliant gold mosaics. Soldiers march endlessly round the site, and nearly every important foreign dignitary who visits the capital goes to get a wreath here in tribute to the person who, it's not an exaggeration to mention, created modern Turkey. After Atatürk died in 1938, his body was laid to rest within the building that now houses Ankara's Ethnography Museum. the development of the Anıtkabir took nine years, from 1944 to 1953. Exactly 15 years after his death, Atatürk's remains were interred under the large sarcophagus here.

An adjoining museum contains personal belongings from the revered man's life, including his clothes, automobiles, and private library. The corridors underneath the tomb house an in-depth exhibit on the 1919–22 War of Independence. The focal points are three enormous dioramas, each quite 100 feet long, depicting the three major theaters of war: Çanakkale (1915), Sakarya (1921), and also the Great Attack (1922). These are in the middle of rather intense sound effects—explosions, gunfire—to further dramatize the events. A map at the top of the Çanakkale hall shows Turkey and therefore the territorial claims various other nations were making thereon at the time, which supplies some insight into why the Turks felt so besieged. Other exhibits explain major developments during the first Republican period, particularly Atatürk's reforms and legacy. There's also a present shop with all kinds of Atatürk souvenir imaginable.