After a quick trip to the embassy, I had plenty of time to explore Ankara before my evening flight back to Istanbul. My friends here had organized for a Kurdish friend in Ankara (with very little English) to help me get around Ankara and surprisingly the first place he took me was here... Anitkabir, Kemal Atatürk's mausoleum!
The above is the Lion's Walk, the Hittite lions symbolizing power and peace. As Serkan, my guide, walked with me down this path towards the ceremonial grounds, I felt both his disdain for Atatürk (dare I write this) and the intensity of his Kurdish nationalism, in contrast with the Kemalist nationalism - a complex kind of "Turkishness" which, frankly, is hard for me to comprehend. 
And this is the mausoleum... I think it is pretty standard really. The building is not so different from Ho Chi Minh's or Mao Tse Tung's. But the ceremonial grounds are kind of unique with the tiles on the ground imitating the patterns found in Turkish carpets and kilims. This areas can purportedly hold 15,000 people. 
Finally we see a ceremonial guard beside the entrance to the mausoleum. I believe the gold gilded letters form Atatürk's address to the Turkish Youth... and on the other side of the entrance, a speech he made on the anniversary of the Turkish republic. I wondered about the contents of these to addresses, but I didn't dare ask my guide... Being Canadian, I believe in the right to ethnic self identification and it astounds me that inscribed everywhere in Turkey (sides of mountains, at the entrance of parks, etc) is a phrase that proclaims, "How happy we are to be Turkish." I can't join in diatribes about how all the ills in Turkey originate from certain ethnic groups... but neither can I stand in front of the mausoleum's guard and encourage my guide to proclaim the glories of Ocalan!
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