This is not a new picture, I took it back in October. But I realize I haven't shown you this important Ankara monument before. It is the mausoleum of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the Anitkabir. Atatürk (meaning the Father of the Turks) was the founder and first president of the Turkish republic, after the First World War. (This war had profound consequences for the previous Ottoman empire and the lands it controlled and laid the foundation for the whole modern state system in the Middle East, not to mention the conflicts within it. Atatürk was also an important model for other leaders attempting to modernize their previous empires into nation-states, with varying success. But I'm sure we'll come back to that some other time.)
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