How happy is the one who says, 'I am a Turk'...

He was in Jaffa.

He was doing his internship there, participating in his unit's training, training soldiers, overseeing target practice, and working to ensure they were well-trained soldiers for his Army.

He did not view soldiers as superior to one another.

Every soldier was equal. They were each a soldier who had left their village, their homeland, and their mother's hearth to face death. He cherished each and every one of them.

The person we are talking about, of course, was Mustafa Kemal. But not every Company Commander in his unit was the same. Some Company Commanders viewed Arab soldiers as superior to Turkish soldiers. Since the 5th Army Command in Damascus was in an Arab region, the soldiers to be trained consisted mostly of Arab soldiers. However, the non-commissioned officers training these soldiers were Turkish soldiers who had come from the Anatolian geography.

Meanwhile, an elderly Captain, who had risen through the ranks, called a Turkish sergeant, who was acting harshly toward Arab soldiers struggling to follow orders because they did not know Turkish, into his office. And he began to insult the soldier. The sergeant was a sturdy, large-framed soldier. Mustafa Kemal was there too. He was sitting in the Captain's office with Müfit. The Captain began to insult the Turkish soldier in a way that would break his dignity.

-“How,” he said, “can you act harshly toward these children who belong to the noble Arab race, the descendants of our Prophet?”

The scale of the insults began to grow with similar sentences. While the Captain was glorifying the Arab race, he was insulting and belittling his own Turkish race. His voice grew louder and louder. Mustafa Kemal looked at the expression on the face of the insulted sergeant; he was very respectful. However, as the Captain continued to insult him, the sergeant's face began to harden. But after a while, tears flowed from his eyes and rolled down his cheeks. Seeing this scene, Mustafa Kemal could not bear it any longer. “Captain, be quiet!” he shouted suddenly. The Captain was surprised and fell silent. In a low voice, he only managed to say;

-“Did I say something wrong?” The angered Mustafa Kemal ended the matter with these words and left the room.

-“Yes, you insulted him very badly. You have no right to do this. The Arab race may be superior in many respects, but it is an undeniable fact that the Turkish race, to which you, I, Müfit, and the sergeant belong, is also a great and noble nation.”

This statement was the final word.

The Captain also regretted what he had done. The soldier left the room. Everyone left in a saddened state. With the doors, the subject was also closed. However, this incident stuck in Mustafa Kemal's mind like a nail. He would never forgive the act of insulting one's own race to view another as superior.

No state that does not rely on its own race could survive.

However, he learned something else here as well. A state, while not denying its own race, could not view any race as superior or impose it upon society.

It should not impose it.

There, he learned that no ethnic identity is superior to another and that none should be imposed by the state.

That day, he learned that the state he would establish and design in his mind needed to provide a supreme identity to its own people, and that with the people's acceptance of this supreme identity, they should have the freedom to express their own sub-identities in every aspect. It was based on this thought that Mustafa Kemal did not say, “How happy is the one who is a Turk” that day. He said, “How happy is the one who says, 'I am a Turk'.”

Nowadays, we praise Arabism and the like in the name of the Ummah, but states that praise other races cannot survive.

That is why, “How happy is the one who says, 'I am a Turk'...”