Speech Delivered by Atatürk
on the Tenth Anniversary
of the Foundation of the Republic
The Turkish Nation!
We are in the fifteenth year of the start of
our way of liberation. This is the greatest day marking the tenth year of our
Republic.
May it be celebrated.
At his moment, as a member of the great
Turkish nation, I feel the deepest joy and excitement for having achieved this
happy day.
My citizens,
We have accomplished many and great tasks in
a short time. The greatest of these is the Turkish Republic, the basis of
which is the Turkish vallancy and the great Turkish culture.
We owe this achievement to the cooperative
progress of the Turkish nation and its valuable army. However, we can never
consider what we have achieved to be sufficient, because we must, and are
determined to, accomplish even more and greater tasks. We shall raise our
country to the level of the most prosperous and civilised nations of the
world. We shall endow our nation with the broadest means and sources of
welfare. We shall raise our national culture above the contemporary level of
civilisation.
Thus, we should judge the measure of time not
according to the lax mentality of past centuries, but in terms of the concepts
of speed and movement of our century.
Compared to the past, we shall work harder.
We shall perform greater tasks in a shorter time. I have no doubt that we
shall succeed in this, because the Turkish nation is of excellent character.
The Turkish nation is intelligent, because the Turkish nation is capable of
overcoming difficulties of national unity, and because it holds the torch of
positive sciences.
I must make it clear with due emphasis, that
a historical quality of the Turkish nation, which is an exalted human
community, is its love for fine arts and progress in them. This is why our
national ideal is to constantly foster and promote, with all means and
measures, our nation's excellent character, its tireless industriousness,
intelligence, devotion to science, love for fine arts and sense of national
unity.
This ideal, which very well suits the Turkish
nation, will enable it to succeed in performing the civilised task falling on
it in securing true peace for all mankind.
The Great Turkish Nation, you have heard me
speak on many occasions over the last fifteen years promising success in the
tasks we undertook. I am happy that none of my promises have been false ones
which could have shaken my nation's confidence in me.
Today, I repeat with the same faith and
determination that is will soon be acknowledged once again by the entire
civilised world that the Turkish nation, who has been progressing towards the
national ideal in exact unison, is a great nation. Never have doubted that the
great, but forgotten, civilised characteristic and the great civilised talents
of the Turkish nation, will, in its progress henceforth, rise like a new sun
from the high horizon of civilisation for the future.
The Turkish nation,
I express my heartfelt wish that you will
celebrate, after each decade elapsing into eternity, this great national day,
in greater honour, happiness, peace and prosperity.
How happy is the one who says "I am a
Turk."
29th October 1933
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
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