Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan addressed an international symposium in Ankara marking the 125th anniversary of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's birth, calling on citizens to treat the founding concepts of the republic as unifying rather than divisive. He identified those core principles as the republic, national sovereignty, the national state, and secularism.
Erdoğan also spoke about Türkiye's future ambitions, citing active EU accession negotiations and a government goal of raising per-capita income to 10,000 USD by 2012.
Atatürk Studies Center Chairman Prof. Mehmet Saray announced plans to translate Atatürk's landmark Great Speech into eight additional languages, including Russian, Arabic, and Chinese. Saray raised concerns about roughly 7 million illiterate people still living in Türkiye and criticized local officials for tolerating families who refuse to send daughters to school. He urged Erdoğan to launch a national literacy campaign.
British scholar Prof. Andrew Mango, noted for his writings on Atatürk, described the founder as uniquely combining two roles, victorious military commander and architect of a modern state, arguing no other leader has held both distinctions simultaneously.
Historical summary. TurkishPress restated this wire report, first published in May 2006, in its own words.