The unbearable lightness of commemorating Malazgirt while the Turkish seal of Anatolia is being removed

The previous ones were reconnaissance expeditions that unsettled Byzantium. The Battle of Manzikert on August 26, 1071, was very different from the small-scale skirmishes between Byzantine garrisons and Turkish raiders. Manzikert was the great victory that opened Anatolia to Oghuz settlement and made it the eternal Turkish homeland.

Not long after August 26, 1071, Turkish raids would extend to the coasts of the Marmara, Aegean, and Mediterranean, and Oghuz tents would cover Anatolia with their summer and winter pastures. After 1071, Byzantine sovereignty in Anatolia weakened, and its political geography shrank significantly. The Byzantine intrigues devised to drive the Turks out of Anatolia also came to nothing.

On August 26, 1071, the Byzantine lock on Anatolia was broken, and the geography was Turkified through the names given to its mountains, stones, plains, and waters. The transition of the Oghuz, who were seen as nomads far from civilization, to a settled life, and their presence in agricultural production and handicrafts in villages, towns, and cities, is the subject of another article.

At this point, it is time to speak of the insidious removal (disruption/dismantling) of the Turkish seal placed on the new homeland, whose lock was opened by the 1071 Manzikert victory. Although there were devshirme (recruits) in the central bureaucracy and state organization during the Anatolian Seljuk and Ottoman periods, the public consisted overwhelmingly of the Turkish element. So much so that the sultan/padishah was called Grand Turk (Great Turk) by Westerners, and Anatolia was called Turcomania (the land of the Turks).

We hope that the speeches made in Ahlat on the 953rd anniversary of the 1071 Manzikert Victory and the demonstrations held with the costumes of historical TV series do not distract from the fact that Anatolia's lock is being broken with demagoguery about the Ansar/Muhajir! May the public not be lulled to sleep by speeches of nativism and nationalism thrown as smoke screens for the project of de-Turkifying Anatolia under the guise of Manzikert fervor!

August 26, 1071, was the victory that opened the lock of Anatolia and made it a Turkish homeland forever. August 26, 1922, was the first day of the victory that would close the lock of Anatolia against the Greek Army, the hitman of imperialism, and sweep them all the way to İzmir. The fact that the auspicious victories of the two great commanders who founded and saved the homeland both occurred on August 26 should be reflected upon.

October 29, 1923, was the date of the establishment based on a nation-state and unitary structure. The pioneers of the liberation and the establishment had learned lessons from the collapse of the multi-religious, multi-lingual, and multi-ethnic Ottoman Empire regarding the principles upon which the new state should be founded. The Republic of Turkey would be based on a nation-state, a unitary structure, modernity, and secularism. The central identity would be shaped on the basis of the main element, Turkishness, and belonging to the Turkish Nation would be the common bond.

Those who did not stand with the Turkish Nation fighting for freedom and independence, but instead took their place in the front of treason alongside figures like Vahdettin, Damat Ferit, İskilipli Atıf, and Mustafa Sabri, could not prevent the liberation, just as they could not prevent the establishment. However, hostility toward the Republic, Atatürk, and Turkishness has been passed down from generation to generation as a cursed legacy and an intellectual poison leading to paralysis of consciousness, reaching the present day. The patient and insidious political representatives of this understanding, which is the antithesis of the Republic, have always waited for the most opportune moment.

What are the more than 10 million illegal migrants, who treat Turkey as a thoroughfare and have not adopted any of the values of Turkey and the Turkish Nation, doing in our country on the 953rd anniversary of Manzikert? If you look at the architects of the project to break the Turkish lock of Anatolia, remove the Turkish seal, and turn Turkey into a demographic dump, you will see the correct answer to the question. But only provided that you have not lost your common sense and consciousness, which would prevent the smoke screens thrown over Manzikert from obstructing your vision!