Happy 30 August Victory Day

Today, we are proud to celebrate the 102nd anniversary of the Great Victory we won on 30 August 1922, which was the basis for the establishment of the Republic of Turkey. The alliance states lost the 1st World War, which occurred as a result of developments such as conflicts of interest between the great powers that occurred in the early 1900s, newly developing intellectual movements, industrialisation, and the Ottoman Empire withdrew from the war with the Armistice of Mondros. The Anatolian lands, which we have made our homeland by giving life and shedding blood for a thousand years, were occupied by the occupying powers and their pawns, and the Treaty of Sevres, which is a black stain on our history, was imposed on our nation. Wherever the occupying imperialist powers entered, as if they were spewing their historical grudges, they tortured, persecuted and insulted our women, children and the elderly, which is rare in the world.
In an environment where dark clouds hovered over our country, M. Kemal and his colleagues lit the torch of independence and paved the way to the light with the motto ‘YA STIKLAL OR DEATH’. Thus, the Turkish nation has started to resist by shielding its life on all fronts with the movement of reawakening and resurrection. Necip Fazıl Kısakürek expressed his feelings in his poem Sakarya Türküsü in 1949 as follows; ‘The road is his, the rest is all drudgery / You crawled on your face a lot, get up Sakarya’. The Turkish Army, which rose up in Sakarya, stopped the Greek forces and changed the misfortune of the Turkish nation, which had been retreating since the 2nd Vienna in 1683. The retreating Greek forces strengthened the positions they had prepared in advance and formed a defence line. A British General who visited this line said, ‘If the Turks overcome this defence line in six months, let them boast that we overcame it in a day’.
The decision of the Turkish nation was definitely to expel the enemy from the country. In order to do this, he had to strengthen his army. On 20 July 1922, M. Kemal's authority as Commander-in-Chief was extended indefinitely, the military units on the Eastern and Southern fronts were shifted to the western front and M. Kemal ordered his army to ‘Get ready for war’. On the morning of 26 August, the Turkish Army went on the offensive and broke the Greek defence line within two hours. On the morning of 26 August, when the Turkish artillery started firing, Gazi Mustafa Kemal said, ‘O Lord, make the Turkish Army victorious. Do not allow Turkishness and Islam to remain under the feet of the enemy and in chains of bondage’. On 30 August, the Greek army was encircled in the Kızıltaş valley north of Mount Murat in Dumlupınar. Gazi Mustafa Kemal led and managed the war as the Commander-in-Chief, and the Greek forces were destroyed.
On the morning of 31 August, M. Kemal Pasha, Fevzi Pasha, İsmet Pasha and Nurettin Pasha, the commander of the 1st Army, arrived at Kızıltaş valley with an ox cart in Çalköy. They reviewed the situation. M. Kemal opened his hands and recited Fatiha to the martyrs and said, ‘O Lord, do not blame me. Do not hold me responsible for the dead. The Greeks entered my country. They attacked the honour of our nation. They wanted to destroy Turkishness and Muslims who believe and pray to You. We fought this war to save my homeland. Forgive me for the blood shed by the Turkish nation in the war of liberation,’ he prayed. On 1 September, he gave the order ‘Armies, your first target is the Mediterranean Sea, forward!’ and within ten days, a distance of 500 km was covered by fighting and on foot, and on 9 September, our cavalry under the command of Fahrettin Pasha entered Izmir and pushed the Greeks into the sea. World Historians used the expression ‘Turks won a brilliant battle of annihilation again after the Battle of Mohaç’ for the Great Offensive.
     The victory, which was written in golden letters in Turkish History, had very important political and military consequences. The 30 August Victory is the burial of the last crusade in Greek disguise in Anatolia. It is the day when the most incredible victory of history was won with the Turkish nation, state, army, M. Kemal and his heroic soldiers, and the coffin prepared for the Turk, in the words of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founding leader of the Pakistani state, ‘was put on the head of those who were preparing for the funeral ceremony’. Our history full of heroism that gifted us the 30 August victory, our flag, which opened a new era, has become a legend, an epic of fearlessness and patriotism. On the occasion of this holy day and historical day, I commemorate Gazi Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, his comrades-in-arms and our sainted martyrs with mercy, I bow respectfully in front of their memories once again, and I express my gratitude. May their souls rest in peace.