Was the Republic necessary?

Yes.

Or rather, the Republican regime was not a necessity, but an obligation. It was born out of compulsion.

As for the reason; you know that the 19th century closed world history with the "end of empires and dynasties."

The right of nations to self-determination—self-determinism—and ethnic consciousness were born with the 1789 French Revolution, and this ethnic consciousness caused the fragmentation of empires that encompassed vast territories and different nations.

Subsequently, with the First Industrial Revolution that took place between 1760 and 1830, working and producing people began to seek their own economic and social rights, and while seeking their rights, they began to question the Kings, Dynasties, and Sultans at their head.

These and similar developments marked the end of kings, sultans, and dynasties at the beginning of the 20th century. The Romanov Dynasty in Russia, the Habsburg Dynasty in Austria-Hungary, the Manchu Dynasty in China, the Qajar Dynasty in Iran, and the Ottoman Dynasty in the Ottoman Empire were examples of history's most painful collapses.

The side of this historical end that concerns us was the Ottoman Empire and its Dynasty. As an inevitable end of history, the Ottoman Empire would collapse, but would a Turkish Nation be born from this collapse? Or, while the imperialists were carving up the Ottoman Empire, would Anatolia remain for us as the Turkish Nation?

However, from the statements of US President Woodrow Wilson and British Prime Minister Lloyd George, and/or from the minutes of the 1918 Paris Conference, the articles of the Mudros Armistice signed on October 30, 1918, and the subsequent Treaty of Sèvres, and the occupations carried out based on these, we understood that the imperialists did not even want to leave Anatolia to us.

But history and fortune smiled upon us; in the end, an Atatürk emerged, took the Turkish Nation behind him, and embarked on a struggle to save this nation.

So, how would this struggle for salvation, its method, and its form be?

For example, would he take all powers into his own hands, assume the role of a single man, become a sultan or a king, or would he save it through a constitutional monarchy? Could there not have been other regimes?

Was the Republican regime and method absolutely necessary? Could we not have been saved without the Republican regime?

For example, a constitutional monarchy or a symbolic Sultanate. Could it not have been a United Kingdom like in England?

No, it could not have been.

The Republic was not born from Atatürk's personal preference. The Republic was a compulsion. It was an obligation. Atatürk saw this.

Specifically;

For example, we said that at the end of the 20th century, kingdoms, empires, and dynasties were buried in history. So, if the Sultan and Caliph had remained, could we not have continued like that? We could not. There is an example of this. The Constitutional Monarchy (Meşrutiyet).

Under the constitutional monarchy, we had a Sultan at our head. We had a Caliph. Under the constitutional monarchy, Abdülhamit stayed at our head for one year, Sultan Reşat for 9 years, and Vahdettin for 4 years. At the same time as Caliph. Okay, the constitutional monarchy created a national consciousness, a social revolution, and a partial parliamentary regime, but do you know what happened? Because of the administrative vacuum and disorder, we lost the vast Balkans. We lost 5.5 million square kilometers of land.

It did not work.

The Caliphate also did not work. The Caliph's call for Jihad in 1914 did not work. This showed us that the Caliphate had also lost its function.

The Sultanate, that too had ended and completed its duty. Its cohesion had been broken. In 1918-19, Istanbul was occupied. The Sultan was practically taken prisoner in the capital. This also showed us that the Sultanate was no longer useful, and had even begun to cause harm.

Absolute monarchy did not work, constitutional monarchy did not work, one-man rule, kingdom regimes, and the like were not working.

So what was the most correct form of government? The most correct form of government was for the nation to govern itself.

It would not have been any other way.

Atatürk gave the first sign of this in the Amasya Circular. He said, "The independence of the nation will be saved by the determination and resolve of the nation itself." This was the first message of a new state based on National Sovereignty.

The only solution for this was the Parliament. It was the Parliament that the nation would establish, where the nation would have a say, and where the nation would govern itself. It was the national assembly.

Only the nation itself would govern the nation; no one else would govern it.

Atatürk did this. He opened a Parliament in Ankara based on the will of the nation. He elected its president, established its ministries, and began to make the Parliament work. There is no King at its head, no Sultan, no Dictator. At the head of the Parliament is Mustafa Kemal Pasha, the Deputy of Erzurum, whom the nation elected as a deputy through the ballot box. That is, there is Atatürk.

The parliament established by Atatürk founded a state, built an army, trained soldiers, fought, saved the homeland from occupation, and in the end, achieved success and received its identity at Lausanne.

The nation's own will and the nation's governing itself saved it from the Mudros Captivity and the Sèvres collapse that the Sultanate administrations had signed.

We had succeeded with this method and had reached the end of the War of Independence. Lausanne had also been signed.

But there was a problem.

When the summer of 1923 arrived, in the Parliament established by the Nation, the deputies were electing the Prime Minister, but in addition to this, the deputies were also electing the Ministers. This method had worked during the war, but it was causing harm in peacetime. The fact that deputies elected the Ministers was hindering and locking the formation of the Government. For example, a deputy would gather a group of supporters to get elected as a Minister, engaging in factionalism or a show of power. Some wanted to hold onto the power of being a Deputy to get elected as a Minister. Others were placing large advertisements in newspapers and spreading unnecessary lobbying. Everyone wanted to be a Minister, but this was not possible. Just because of this, the Government could not be formed.

We had challenged the world, we had brought the whole world to its knees, but we could not form the Government to govern ourselves and we could not govern ourselves.

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk solved the problem again.

On September 22, 1923, he gave an interview to the Austrian newspaper Neue Freie Presse. In the interview he gave, Atatürk said; "Sovereignty belongs unconditionally to the Nation. The authority to make laws, the legislative power, and the power to govern the State, the executive power, have appeared and gathered in the Parliament where the nation is solely represented. It is possible to summarize these two words in one word: Republic!"

As the Speaker of the Parliament, he met with Prime Minister Ali Fethi on the evening of October 24-25, 1923, and tried to form the Government. But it still did not work. The election of the Ministries, which became vacant as some Military Pashas returned to the barracks, could not be realized.

Ultimately, on the evening of October 28, he gathered his friends and stated the solution himself. He said, "Tomorrow we will declare the Republic."

In the parliamentary debates that lasted until 14:00 on October 29, 1923, the Government still could not be formed.

Finally, it came to Atatürk; Atatürk said, "Friends, you are all very valuable, but it is not possible for all of you to be Ministers at once." He proposed the form of the Republic, for which he had decided the night before and prepared the draft constitution, to the parliament, and the proposal was accepted by the Parliament.

The problem was solved.

The way to overcome all administrative crises, the way to be saved from occupation and captivity, was the Republic.

It was a compulsion for the salvation of the Turkish Nation.

Long live the Republic.