Ankara, when it became Turkey’s capital, was a very sleepy and provincial place, and it was chosen as capital chiefly because it was on the way to somewhere else. It had a railway station, one of the stopovers of the German-planned Berlin–Baghdad line, and its buffet served as the French Embassy. However, when his first Excellency put his head out of the swing doors, he contemplated a marsh, with some ruins on a hill; and, when the first British Excellency arrived, to have dinner with the President, he would have to pick his white-tied way through snow-drifts, being careful to avoid being eaten by a wolf or a Turkish feminist.

However, even back then, there was a point to the town. The ideology behind it was a powerful one…