Today is a holiday, wake up early children

A country on the edge of a cliff, years of war, successive revolutions, and the subsequent Nobels.

The day the foundations of modern Turkey were laid.

The day when the chaos that followed the fall of the dynasty was replaced by hope.

The collapse of the Ottoman Empire, which could not fulfill the requirements of the industrial revolutions despite all its efforts, and the establishment of modern Turkey.

The Ottoman Empire, which made all its investments in the Balkan geography, lost its homeland—like Andalusia—where it had invested, labored, and developed for years, once it lost the lands it had inhabited for 500 years.

It returned to Asia Minor, where poverty, drought, and disease reigned.

It had no roads, no schools, no midwives, and no teachers.

Like a bankrupt holding company, it had both lost everything it had and was in debt.

Fortunately, when the Ottoman Empire finally understood the reality of its situation, it had trained enough people through its final investment moves to save Turkey and establish a modern country.

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, one of the brightest of these, and his comrades-in-arms established a country to house those who remained, even though many were sick and disabled.

This country, as a result of the revolutions it carried out one after another, took its place in the modern world. 

Of course, it could have been better.

We did not expect it to be Germany.

Or Japan, which was hit by an atomic bomb.

But it could have been South Korea, which was divided in two and was far behind Turkey.

It could have been Spain, which struggled with fascism.

Fortunately, it took its place within the G20.

Despite all the disadvantages of the Cold War, it established its industry.

It ranks among the top in the field of tourism.

Despite all its problems, 350 thousand foreign students are receiving education in its universities.

Even if it does not have an automobile industry, it fulfills its duty as a subcontractor in the automotive supply industry.

Alongside all of this, it established a system where its scientists, who received the majority of their education in Turkey, won Nobel Prizes.

One wishes that the Nobel-winning scientists could have received their awards while working in Turkey.

But it did not happen.

The interruption of the Republican Revolutions and the nurturing of the counter-revolution by our necktied partners exacerbated the problems.

In lands where free thought could not flourish, the awards remained at the level of subcontracting.