Ankara, Pt. 2: Who's Your Daddy?

Hello all!
Our second day in Ankara began with a trip to the city's most famous site: Anıt Kabir, Atatürk's mausoleum. Since my day was cut a bit short by illness (Turkish food got me again!), this post will mostly be about Ataturk the man, and what we've come to know about him throughout Turkey.
Atatürk was born Mustafa Kemal in 1881 in what is now Thessaloniki, Greece. He quickly rose through the ranks of the Ottoman military, becoming a colonel by 1915, when he found himself at Gallipoli. He eventually became commander of the Turkish force, and his successful defense of the peninsula gave the Ottomans their only victory of the First World War. After the Ottoman Empire surrendered in 1918, its vast holdings were partitioned among the victorious Allies. More ominously for the Turks, the Allies even sought to divide up the Anatolian heartland of the Empire; by the 1920 Treaty of Sevres, well over 2/3 of what is now Turkey (including Istanbul!) went to Greece, Italy, France, Britain, and a newly created Armenia (for a dramatic map, go here). Mustafa Kemal refused to accept the settlement and waged over the next three years a titanic struggle primarily against the Greeks for Turkish independence. Improbably, they won, and in 1923, the Turkish Republic was born, with Kemal as its first president. Over the next fifteen years, he revolutionized every aspect of Turkish society: he upturned the calendar, introduced last names (he picked 'Atatürk', a name by law reserved only for him; it means 'Father of the Turks'), changed the alphabet, introduced women's rights, revolutionized dress, and that's just the beginning. Since his death in 1938, politics in this country has revolved around his legacy, and what relevance it has in the current era. One key platform of his ideology, secularism, has been seized upon by the military establishment as the core principle of Kemalism; they have enforced it rigorously, including 3 coups since 1960.
Some call the omnipresence of Mustafa Kemal the 'Cult of Atatürk'. It's a hard notion to disregard out of hand given these kind of images; he really is everywhere:

Conventional heroic equestrian statues (this from Bursa)

Statues of the Great Man, striding forward, winning the War of Turkish Independence (this from Taksim Square in Istanbul)

Huge pictures of him atop decrepit buildings (from Fatih, in Istanbul)

Double sided (Ataturk as Janus?) statue, with Ataturk's famous phrase "Happy is he who calls himself a Turk" emblazoned on both sides (this from Sirkeci train station)
Golden Ataturk head emerging from map of Turkey (this from Kultepe)

Or perhaps you'd like an Ataturk tea service, with the GMK ('Gazi Mustafa Kemal'; Gazi is Arabic for holy warrior) monogram on the cups?

And just in case you've missed the other 4,000 Ataturk portraits right next to you, they're occasionally posted randomly along the street (here outside of Bursa).
After seeing him everywhere, it was pretty cool to go see the center of 'Ataturk worship' in the country, his enormous mausoleum. It's situated on a hill such that it dominates the city (facing down the 1987 Kocatepe Mosque about which I posted yesterday). First you walk down the 'Lion's Road', lined with stone lions (ancient Hittite symbols of power) and Turkish soldiers:

You finally reach the colossal mausoleum itself, a kind of austere Lincoln Memorial:

While we were in the building (all that's inside is his 40-ton sarcophagus which marks the place where, 7 meters below, his actual body is buried, in Turkish soil), the Turkish Minister of Sports or Youth or something marched in with a general and an entourage to place a wreath on Ataturk's grave; I guess that kind of thing happens every day.
There's a huge museum underneath the mausoleum that's equally as interesting, with huge oil paintings showing critical moments of Ataturk's leadership in his various wars. Unfortunately, by that point I was already starting to feel bad; I was almost completely unable to pay attention at the incredible Museum of Anatolian Civilizations and was sick/asleep by 6 in a hotel.
It was great to visit the Big Man's grave, a definite stop for anyone in this part of town. The ostensible purpose of this trip is to define 'Turkishness', to explore what makes a Turk. Is it religion? History? Something in the water? More and more, I'm coming to think that it's Ataturk; that an identification with this man truly defines someone as a citizen of Turkey (I'm using Turk in the political sense, not as an ethnic construct), and everyone in this country frames their politics and identity either in line with or in opposition to Him.
That's probably enough historical and political musings for now; thanks for reading, and I'll talk to you soon!