For his first IgoUgo journal in well over a year, Mutt presents Ankara: One Man’s Dream…. So, naturally, we thought this intrepid traveler had been busy with an unusual (and, for him, rather easy-sounding) quest to visit Turkey's capital. Not so; the title dreamer is actually Turkey’s founder, Mustafa Kemel Atatürk, and Mutt is right on his trail.
Mutt (who, it must be said, has written one of the most entertaining profile blurbs we’ve seen) sets out to cover the “much maligned modern capital” that “owes its current august state to the influence of one man." Atatürk, Mutt says, placed the “Anatolian backwater” that was Ankara “at the heart of a new nation,” and the famed Turkish leader’s life and death are still very much a part of the city’s heartbeat.
Mutt reviews an impressive collection of important places: the Museum of the War of Independence, the Museum of the Republic, the annexes under Atatürk’s mausoleum (where he found the car pictured here), and the mausoleum itself.
That itinerary was just another day in the life of our itinerant history buff, but what if you want the short tour? The Anıtkabir mausoleum is Mutt’s must-see pick for the city: “Turkey is of course the home of the original Mausoleum (that of King Mausolus in Bodrum) and this modern manifestation is an essential pilgrimage for anyone in Turkey’s capital city, whether you’re a local, a tourist or the new U.S. President.”