28 October 2016•Update: 31 October 2016
ANKARA
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan Friday touted Turkey’s resilience in a message marking Saturday’s Oct. 29, Republic Day.
"All our citizens and all our friends should rest assured that today, Turkey is a more powerful, determined, and decisive country compared to the morning of July 15," referring to the defeated coup of this summer, Erdogan said in an official message.
Erdogan paid tribute to the Turkish nation’s heroism in the face of the July 15 coup-plotters, members of the Fetullah Terrorist Organization (FETO), saying: "The determination of our nation, which protected its freedom, democracy, government, and state by facing down the weapons of the traitorous FETO members, will be our most important assurance of us reaching our 2023 targets on our republic’s 100th anniversary."
Pointing to Turkey's long, glorious history, Erdogan said: "We see our republic as the acquisition of our 2,200-year-old state tradition, and the inheritors of the Seljuks and Ottomans in the region we live in, and which has been gained amid the conditions of these difficult times."
Each year, Turkey marks Republic Day on Oct. 29, a commemoration of the proclamation of the Turkish Republic in 1923.
The official proclamation of the republic took place on Oct. 29, 1923, by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. On that day, the new name of the nation and its status as a republic was declared.
After the declaration and a vote in Turkey’s Grand National Assembly or parliament, Ataturk was unanimously elected the new republic’s first president.
