It belongs to the nation

The Inebolu-Kastamonu-Ilgaz-Çankırı route is the lifeline of the National Struggle. The human resources needed by Ankara, and the weapons, ammunition, and all kinds of logistical supplies needed by the front, were provided via this arduous but secure route. This is why this route, which bears the footprints of Şerife Gelin, Fatma Ana, and Hatice Nine, and the wheel tracks of their oxcarts, will go down in history as the Independence Road!

Many local and foreign writers, politicians, and diplomats, while reaching Ankara via this route, were deeply moved by the oxcart convoys stretching out like a line of ants and the silent nobility of the Turkish women walking in front of their oxen. When reading the memoirs of those who witnessed history regarding the oxcart convoys, the resting places, the local people, and the rear of the front, it is as if you have turned the hourglass back 100 years!

At this point, it is time to quote from the Independence Road memoirs of Mustafa Necati Bey, a deputy of the Grand National Assembly (TBMM) awarded the Medal of Independence, President of the Kastamonu Independence Tribunal, and Atatürk’s Minister of National Education. This memoir once appeared in primary school textbooks under the title “It Belongs to the Nation”:

“While going to Kastamonu, I witnessed the scenes of sacrifice and heroism performed by Anatolian women carrying war materials to the front with their oxcarts in the Ilgaz Mountains. The men had gone to the front; there was no one left in the villages but the elderly, children, and women. They had set out on a long and arduous journey on the route of Küre, Seydiler, Kastamonu, and Ilgaz with the materials they loaded onto their oxcarts in Inebolu. Every time I encountered these blessed convoys, which continued in an uninterrupted, constant flow, I would watch with admiration the ammunition-laden carts pulled by weak oxen and the sun-scorched, barefoot women, elderly, and children at their heads, as if listening to a divine music produced by the creaking of the oxcarts.

As I approached the convoy, a woman’s voice or a child’s cry would sometimes rise, piercing this long silence. We approached the convoy and exchanged greetings. While we were shivering even under our heavy cloaks from the cold, I felt a pang of pity mixed with admiration when I saw a grandmother walking barefoot on the snow, having covered the cart with her only quilt. I had the thought to ask why she had spread her quilt on the cart without even covering the child wrapped in the apron on her back, who was sobbing from time to time:

I pointed to the top of the cart, saying, “Look, the child will freeze, cover him with the quilt.” She met these words in a strange way. She apparently did not consider it something worth asking. When she realized I was waiting for an answer, she ran toward the oxcart as if approaching something sacred: “It is snowing, it belongs to the nation, let it not get damp, my child,” she said, and spread the ends of the quilt thoroughly. It had started to snow. Then I understood that she was making this sacrifice so as not to wet the ammunition. At that moment, I was even ashamed of the pity I had felt earlier. Oh my God. She does not even want her sacrifice to be known. Can there be a soul and love that does not bow before this magnanimity?”

What kind of spiritual greatness is it to prioritize the property of the nation/public over the life of one's own grandchild? What kind of nobility is it to set out on the roads barefoot in the dead of winter to deliver the nation's property to the Mehmetçiks at the front? What kind of wisdom is it to express the national identity and the collective memory kept alive in the deep subconscious in a single sentence on the peaks of Ilgaz?

As for the ruthless looting and the division as spoils of the public assets, which are the legacy of the Mehmetçiks fighting at the front, the grandmothers carrying bullets with their oxcarts in the dead of winter, and the Şerife Gelins who froze to death on the Independence Road, what kind of spiritual misery is this!