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Let us hang our flags, take to the squares, and shout: Long live the Republic

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Our Republic is 100 years old.

Our Republic has completed a century.

Long live, forever live, Gazi Mustafa Kemal Pasha and the Republic founded under his leadership!

October 29 is the date when our National Struggle, which became a beacon of hope for all oppressed nations and showed that imperialists and occupiers could be defeated, was crowned and the Republic was proclaimed.

In Turkey, the Republic is a defensive fortress built against imperialism and the sultanate, an uprising!

As Dr. Hikmet Kıvılcımlı, the Kuvva-yı Milliye (National Forces) Commander of Köyceğiz, stated, it created a "National Liberation" because it "overturned the cauldron of the sultanate and extinguished the fire of imperialism in Turkey" and was born by "fighting against world finance-capitalism (Imperialism) and Ottoman usury-mercantilism (Sultanate)."

When Mustafa Kemal Atatürk defeated these two powers that had been the bane of Turkey for centuries, he hoisted the flag of the Republic at the National Assembly, the symbol of the national will, legitimacy, and administration of the National Struggle.

The Republic is full independence, populism, public-mindedness, enlightenment, modernity, reason, science, law, and justice.

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Following the War of Independence, our young Republic, which waged a true economic war of independence, achieved great successes in the field of economics with the motto "Full independence is possible through economic independence."

Giant industrial facilities were built amidst scarcity and poverty. Those who sold off everything we had while asking, "Does the state do this, does it do that?" have created an economy today that is dependent on imports and mired in debt. We have reached the point of importing straw.

Where did the proceeds from the sale of State Economic Enterprises (privatizations), foreign loans, and high taxes collected go? To investment, production, or employment?

The answer to the question of why our country is in such a political, social, and economic picture today is actually hidden within the question itself.

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Of course, it should not have been this way. The 100th anniversary of our Republic should not have been met like this.

Every year is important, every year is valuable, but the meaning of the 100th year is different. We have a holiday to be celebrated with enthusiasm, pride, and honor all across the country. Our greatest holiday is the Republic.

We are in a geography in the middle of ethnic and sectarian wars, under the plans and provocations of imperialist powers.

What if there were no Gazi Mustafa Kemal and no Republic?

Today is the time to better understand the value of our secular, unitary state and our 100-year-old Republic, and to embrace it tightly amidst this ring of fire.

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The duty has fallen to all of us.

Those in power, the party that is the heir to the liberation and the foundation, and the institutions are not doing what is required.

Then, as citizens, let us write it in big letters everywhere. Let us shout, tirelessly and persistently, in defiance of those who do not want to hear or see: LONG LIVE THE REPUBLIC!

May the hearts of patriots be put at ease.

Let the reactionaries who say "I wish the Greeks had won," the "intellectuals" who praise British or American mandates, and all collaborators see and know this!

Let those who call the Republic—which was created from nothing under the leadership of Gazi Mustafa Kemal Atatürk with life, blood, determination, wisdom, and love for the homeland—a "parenthesis," and those who "fall ill and take to their beds" on National Holidays, remember who they owe their seats to!

There is no room for despair!

Let us celebrate the 100th anniversary of our Republic, which Atatürk described as "especially the protector of the protectorless," in every corner of the homeland.

May October 29 be a date when we shake ourselves off, recover, and gather our strength for Turkey's independence, integrity, future, and the Atatürk Republic once again.

May it be the day we stop waiting for substantial actions from those who only seek to maintain the status quo!

It is time to be like the nationalist, populist, and revolutionary Atatürk.

"The independence of the nation shall be saved by the determination and decision of the nation itself!"

All together, hand in hand, arm in arm, shoulder to shoulder; forward!