Okay, so this structure doesn’t date back to Hippodrome days, although it sits in the same plaza. It was given as a gift to the Ottoman Empire by Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1898. (Yes, the Ottoman Empire lasted that long!) The Ottomans backed the Germans in WWII and as punishment, the Allies intended to carve Turkey into pieces for the victors. But Mustafa Kemal, a former Ottoman Empire army officer, fought off the Allies and eventually established a secular Turkish Republic. Later, the Turkish parliament bestowed upon him the honorary title of Atatürk (“The Grand Turk”).