The philosophy and virtue of the Republic

National holidays are important for every state, every nation, and every society. Even though the "number-crunching" republicans, the "it's not enough but yes" crowd, the leftists of FETÖ, ethnic separatists, religious profiteers, and faith-based racketeers view, portray, belittle, and ignore national holidays as "official discourse, bland celebrations, state-centered historiography, nation-building, authoritarian approaches, or the peak of populism," national holidays are celebrated in various forms in every country. From the USA to Australia, from China to Russia, and from Cuba to France, every country celebrates its holidays according to its own political, social, cultural, and historical structure, its own resources, and its own understanding of celebration. Therefore, ignoring these celebrations is not realistic. It is neither scientific nor objective. At best, it is a product of ignorance, and this liberal ignorance is widespread in our country. It is especially organized in academia, politics, and the media.

Holidays are not only occasions for emotional, historical, political, ideological, social, and cultural dimensions, but also grounds for political accounting. For this reason, our greatest holiday, Republic Day, like all our other holidays, should be seen as both an occasion for pride and a moment for political reckoning. It is essential to know what we have done and how, and to question what we have not been able to do and why, over the past 102 years.

The Republic, founded in 1923 under the leadership of Gazi Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, is the product of the War of Independence. Therefore, the Republic's orientation—populist in the political sense, populist in the social and class sense, and populist in the cultural sense—matured during the years of the War of Independence. The Grand National Assembly of Turkey, which opened on April 23, 1920, with the widest possible participation under the conditions of that period—that is, the Veteran Assembly, the Constituent Assembly—was a democratic assembly where the fiercest debates took place. The 1921 Constitution, adopted by this Assembly, was also based on the 1920 Declaration of Populism.

WAR DEMOCRACY AND THE PEOPLE'S FRONT

The Turkish people conducted the War of Independence under the will and administration of the Assembly. They became a nation while becoming a state, and they became a state while becoming a nation under wartime conditions. Therefore, there is a close relationship between grassroots organization and participation, and between democratization and populism. In the definition of Bülent Tanör, this is a war democracy. A part of this process involved local congresses of various sizes that gathered in Anatolia before Mustafa Kemal Pasha landed in Samsun on May 19, 1919; these congresses turned toward a national perspective, a national organization, and a collective national struggle alongside Mustafa Kemal Pasha. The peak of this process was the Sivas Congress held from September 4 to 11. The Sivas Congress, which adopted the decision of "no to mandates and protectorates," gathered all nationalist, patriotic, anti-annexationist, and Kuvayı Milliye (National Forces) organizations under a single roof: the Society for the Defense of Rights of Anatolia and Rumelia.

As my mentor Attila İlhan, whose student I am proud to be, frequently emphasized, the Republic believed in the people, not the bourgeoisie. It relied on a people's front, not a social class. It favored industrialization under public leadership. It saw that a national bourgeoisie was necessary to create a nation, a national language, a national culture, and a national consciousness. The steps taken in education, language, and the alphabet should also be viewed from this perspective.

The Republic inherited a wreck from the Ottoman Empire. The people's qualified cadres were exhausted in wars; the male population in rural areas, both young and middle-aged, fell as martyrs in wars, and those who could return to their villages and towns returned wounded and weary. The state had fallen into a semi-colonial status, its lands were occupied, its armies were disbanded, and it had tied its fate to the preferences of the victorious states of World War I. Its economy was very weak. It had missed the Industrial Revolution. The existing industry was very fragile. Production was largely based on agriculture. Since agriculture was also carried out under primitive conditions, yields were low. Other areas of economic activity (such as trade, banking, and transport services), especially in large cities, were predominantly in the hands of minorities. The local producer, local industrialist, and local merchant lacked the strength to compete with foreigners.

THE LEGACY INHERITED FROM THE OTTOMANS

The Ottoman Empire was unable to sustain itself with its own income. It lacked the economic power to invest. It was dependent on foreign capital and external debt. Roughly 70 percent of foreign capital investments in the country were made in railways. Those who invested the most in this field were the Germans. Commercial life, partly due to the effect of the 1838 Treaty of Balta Liman, was predominantly under British control. The French came to the fore in banking and insurance activities.

After the 1908 Young Turk Revolution (Second Constitutional Era), in the years 1909–1910, roughly 40 percent of the state's public revenue came from the tithe (aşar) and animal (ağnam) taxes. The tithe tax was also called the Öşür tax and was collected from peasants at a rate of 10 percent in exchange for the agricultural products they produced. The animal tax was a tax collected on small livestock such as sheep and goats. The Ottoman Empire was so weak that the Public Debt Administration (Düyun-ı Umumiye İdaresi), established with the Decree of Muharrem in 1881, served the creditor states by seizing the state's revenues. The Ottomans even had to import wheat, the people's staple food, in some years. Not only was it far from competing with the world of that era in agriculture, animal husbandry, and industry, but the cadres capable of closely following global developments and valuing science and technology were also very limited.

While the state's economic orientation was being determined at the First Turkey Economics Congress (February 17 – March 4, 1923), commonly known as the İzmir Economics Congress, representatives of workers, farmers, industrialists, and merchants also listed their demands. Encouraging national industry, protecting the value of the Turkish currency, and strengthening the public's awareness of savings and the habit of using domestic goods were among the priorities of that period. The slogan "Know the value of your goods" belongs to that era. The National Economics and Savings Society was established under the chairmanship of Kazım Özalp, the Speaker of the Assembly and a hero of the War of Independence. One of the society's goals was to open domestic goods exhibitions in Ankara and Istanbul every year. The slogan of the exhibitions was: "Citizen, use domestic goods."

Events were organized in public institutions and schools to develop an awareness of savings and the habit of using domestic goods. Banners, posters, radio programs, and rallies were organized. News and articles for this purpose were published in newspapers. An Industry Congress and an Agriculture Congress were organized, and an Exhibition House was built in Ankara. These steps were the precursors to the steps taken and to be taken for a social state, social justice, and social welfare. The principles of etatism and populism were included in the party program and later in the constitution for this purpose.

In short, the Republic should be considered together with its economic, political, social, historical, class, and cultural dimensions, as well as the moral dimensions, virtue, nobility, prudence, courage, foresight, and diligence of the nation and citizen it aims to create. It should be grasped not only by its ideology but also by its high human values. It should not be forgotten that Gazi Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who underlined the social and class character, the populist and public-oriented nature of the Republic by saying, "The Republic is especially the protector of the unprotected," also drew attention to the direct relationship between being a Republican and being virtuous with the words, "The Republic is virtue."