From Kocatepe to today: After the August 30 Victory Day...

“The offensive has begun on the entire front. Success is from God!”

This telegram, sent from the front by Commander-in-Chief Mustafa Kemal Pasha on the morning of August 26, 1922, was the announcement that the offensive had begun and a declaration of the Turkish nation's will for independence.

The August 30 Victory, won four days later, is the work of the perseverance and determination of a military genius like Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and a self-sacrificing nation.

104 years later, how did we get from the Gazi Assembly, which received the order for the offensive from Kocatepe, to today's Assembly, where Turkey's future is debated through ethnic identities, regional statuses, and externally supported projects?

The occupation of Iraq, the post-war fragmentation of Syria, the transformation of ethnic and sectarian structures into political actors, the reopening of borders to debate, and the war launched against our neighbor Iran right next door are not independent developments. Unfortunately, Turkey is now a direct target of this regional transformation.

In this environment, the following statements in the August 26 declaration by CHP Chairman Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, who came to lead the party following a nullity decision, are noteworthy:

“Turkey should not be a party to wars in the Middle East, but a founding power of peace.

The common future of Turks, Kurds, and Arabs lies in peace.

Long live the brotherhood of peoples!

Bijî biratiya gelan!

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Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu

Peace is, of course, indispensable. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk already said the most beautiful words on this matter by saying, “Peace at home, peace in the world.”

This latest message given to the Turkish nation by Kılıçdaroğlu from Atatürk's seat is, painfully, in the service of the plans of the imperialism in this geography that Mustafa Kemal defeated, starting first in Çanakkale and then from Kocatepe at Dumlupınar.

Why does the Chairman of the founding party of the Republic of Turkey list Turks, Kurds, and Arabs as separate political subjects instead of expressing the citizens of the Republic of Turkey within a common understanding of nationhood? Why does he promote the discourse of “peoples” in three different languages instead of “nation” and “citizenship”?

Yet, the Turkish nation is the political name for citizenship of the Republic, not for ethnic origin.

At a time when demands for status, land, and sovereignty for ethnic identities are being placed at the center, this change in concept, promoted on behalf of the CHP, can never be seen as innocent.

Precisely for this reason, it is a great delusion to view the Framework Law in the current process merely as a regulation regarding the ending of terrorism.

This law could be one of the most severe steps in a process that could extend from Öcalan's status to the provisions to be applied to organization members, and from debates on citizenship and local administration to the Constitution.

More gravely, the expected Republican resistance was not shown in the Assembly; in the face of the externally supported will formed by the AKP, MHP, and DEM Party, the CHP, the YENİ Party, and the Workers' Party of Turkey said “yes” to the law.

Thus, Turkey's concept of nation, citizenship, state structure, and historical consciousness have also been opened to debate.

On the anniversary of the Great Offensive, the attitude of Mr. Özgür Özel, who left the CHP and founded the YENİ Party, must also be questioned for this reason.

During his recent trip to Rize, he did not display an attitude much different from Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu when he said, “The YENİ Party is the party of the Laz people.”

The points that stand out in the YENİ Party program are its advocacy for education in the mother tongue, its adoption of the European Charter of Local Self-Government, and its movement of ethnic identities to the center of politics.

If, in addition to all this, he also supports the Framework Law, he must explain to the voters which fundamental Republican principle he has separated from the CHP under Kılıçdaroğlu's chairmanship.

The measure that the nation will take into account here is the stance on the state, nation, citizenship, independence, and unitary structure.

The measure of the claim that “we are the real CHP” must be loyalty to the Six Arrows.

The fundamental problem of the Republican voter is a crisis of trust.

Millions of people who are uncomfortable with the government's policies have turned to the opposition, but have sadly witnessed the government and the opposition meeting on the same line on critical issues concerning Turkey's future.

After the August 30 Victory Day, all that remains are the social media posts and celebratory messages made by the government and opposition parties with bombastic rhetoric.

This nation is tired of opposition party actors who use Atatürk's photograph whenever they are in a tight spot, bring the Six Arrows onto the stage at every opportunity, and visit Anıtkabir.

This legacy, crowned with the Republic, is not a propaganda tool that provides political legitimacy.

While celebrating August 30, political parties and their leaders who claim to represent Atatürk's political legacy are expected, above all else, to be representatives of the nation-state understanding.

Defending the Republic means not dividing the Turkish nation into ethnic and political pieces, not opening the unitary state structure to debate, and not handing over Turkey's future to the calculations of foreign powers.

The Turkish nation does not look at who says they are a Kemalist more loudly, but at where one stands when the future of the Republic is at stake.

History's verdict is given not by words spoken with bombast or Atatürk videos created with artificial intelligence, but by the political stance displayed at a critical threshold.

There is a highly dangerous decision that has been taken very recently.

In the circular published by the Ministry of National Education (MEB) before the new academic year, it was stated that the “framework law” enacted regarding the new solution process would be “one of the main goals of the new era.”

The Republican People's Party, which should be advocating for the Nutuk (Speech) to be taught as a textbook in schools, has remained silent on such a dangerous decision as making the Framework Law, which will lead to the division of Turkey, a part of education in schools.

The Turkish nation has been watching the process quietly and calmly in recent times. The new party, which dragged the masses behind it with great hopes, has only reached five hundred thousand in membership. Despite all kinds of negativity, the CHP's membership number is still close to two million.

Those remaining in the Republican People's Party are aware that their party has long since departed from the Republican line. They are watching the process with patience, with loyalty to their party's founding principles and the legacy of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.

On the 104th anniversary of the August 30 Victory Day, I commemorate Gazi Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, his comrades-in-arms, and the Turkish nation that led the struggle for independence to victory with respect and gratitude.