BY YILMAZ OZTUNA (TURKIYE)
Columnist Yilmaz Oztuna comments on Turkey’s past and present. A summary of his column is as follows:
This week we celebrated the 80th anniversary of our Republic. Our 10th anniversary in 1933 was celebrated with great fanfare. Some 15 million people wit great hopes for the future just after the War of Independence lived in Turkey at that time. The people trusted the state so much that they were unaware of how much poverty and deprivation they lived under. Our 15th anniversary in 1938 was celebrated very simply. Until the end of 1934, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk was very ill. He was in Istanbul at that time and was unable to participate in the celebrations. He died just 12 days after the 15th anniversary. Our 20th anniversary took place during World War II. Our 25th anniversary in 1948 followed the 1946 elections in which we had a very strong opposition party: the Democratic Party (DP). Our 30th anniversary (1953) was 500 years after the sultan’s conquest of Istanbul, and the DP was at the peak of its success. Just one year later, the DP received 57% of the votes, something no other party could match. The next time this happened was last November, when the Justice and Development Party (AKP) won a landslide election.
In short, the Republic was Ataturk’s masterpiece of genius. Ataturk carried out the most radical revolutions in our history. However, our entrance into the 21st century wasn’t terribly impressive. The distance between us and the level of contemporary civilization now yawns wider than the gap of Ataturk’s own era.