Erdoğan releases message to mark 94th anniversary of Republic Day

ANKARA

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has released a message to mark the 94th anniversary of the republic’s founding day on Oct. 29, saying that the nation celebrates “a very important milestone in our glorious history as the Turkish Nation.”

“I would like to celebrate the Republic Day of each one of our millions of citizens who live in or outside of our country,” Erdoğan said in a message released on Oct. 28, while commemorating fallen soldiers and veterans.  

“I commemorate with gratitude and blessing all our veterans, particularly Ghazi Mustafa Kemal, the founder of our Republic and triumphant commander of our War of Liberation,” he also said, referring to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey.

Saying that the Republic of Turkey “signifies the rearing and rebirth of a noble nation from its ashes that prefer to die instead of making compromises from its liberty and honor,” Erdoğan noted that the nation “proclaimed, with its blood and spirit, to the whole world that its will could not be fettered and no one could intervene in its fate.”

“The ones rushing into Anatolia to loot the inheritance of the Ottoman Empire whom they named ‘Sick Man’ were devastated by the courage, determination and fight that Turkish nation revealed and ‘they went back as they came,’ just as in the words of Ghazi Mustafa Kemal,” he added.

In his message, Erdoğan said that the spirit that attained victory in 1923 is still alive today, while commemorating the 250 people killed while resisting the failed July 15, 2016, coup attempt, widely believed to have been masterminded by the Fethullahist Terrorist Organization (FETÖ).

“The glorious resistance against July 15 Treachery at the cost of 250 martyrs and 2193 veterans is the indication of this spirit. That night, all members of the Turkish nation including the young or the old and the women or the men have protected the gains of the Republic. We are proud of being a member of such a noble and heroic nation who has the “character of independence,’” Erdoğan added.

The president also said “we work day and night to serve our country in the best way without any distinction, with the motto of ‘There is no lordship, there is service to the nation.’”

“In the last 15 years, the historical reforms we have realized in all areas from democracy to freedom, from trade to investment, from health to foreign policy are the most obvious manifestations of this will. Today, the gate of hope for all the oppressed people and victims in the world is Turkey,” he said.

Turning to Turkey’s fight against terrorist groups, Erdoğan said that the country won’t allow the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), the Syrian Kurdish Peoples’ Protection Units (YPG) and FETÖ to “keep us from our targets.”

“We carry on towards our 2023 goals by fighting against the headlines, conspiracies, pawns that are continuously thrown at us,” he added.

The official proclamation of the Turkish Republic by Atatürk took place on Oct. 29, 1923 when the name of the nation and its status as a republic were declared.

A vote then took place in the Grand National Assembly and Atatürk, a revolutionary statesman, was elected first president of the Republic of Turkey by a unanimous vote. Since then, Turkey celebrates Republic Day every year on Oct. 29.