ANKARA

Turkey has achieved great development since the establishment of the republic by its founding father Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and today strives for becoming one of the most developed countries, the Turkish president said on Tuesday.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, speaking at a commemoration event held on the occasion of 82nd anniversary of Ataturk’s demise in the capital Ankara, paid tribute to the founding father and commented on development stages Turkey has gone through since its foundation.

"We commemorate the commander-in-chief of our War of Independence, founder of our republic, first President Mustafa Kemal Ataturk," Erdogan said, thanking all those who contributed to the freedom and prosperity of Turkey since the country's founding.

Since the foundation of the republic, Turkey's population rose from 13 million to 83 million, Erdogan said.

The total number of primary, secondary, and high schools along with higher education institutions surged from 5,000 to 88,000, while the number of teachers and faculty members increased from 12,400 to over 1.14 million, he noted, adding that today, the country has a total of 24 million students, whereas the number was 359,000 when the republic was founded.

Turkey's total number of doctors rose from 1,000 to 174,000 while the number of hospital beds increased from 10,000 to 251,000.

Erdogan also noted that the number of factories employing over 10 workers rose from 540 to 185,000. The number of businesses which employed over 100 employees was 53, now the total number of businesses employing over 150 is 26,450, he said, adding that the number of businesses with over 250 employees reached 5,060.

The Turkish leader stressed that the length of railway lines barely reached 4,100 kilometers (2,547 miles), which is now 14,000 km (8,699 miles) with 213 km (132 miles) of high-speed railways.

The main roads had a total length of 14,000 km (8,699 miles), and today it reached 27,714 km (17,220 miles) of divided roads and 3,325 km (2,066 miles) of highways, he noted.

The president also said: "While the total foreign capital investment amount was $50 million, this figure reached $223 billion in the last 18 years."

"While Turkey's rich irrigation and energy generation potential was not used at all, right now we can irrigate 6,6 hectares of land," he stressed, adding: "Our local installed power rose to 58,294 megawatts, which means the rate of local energy generation has exceeded 62%.”

Erdogan said Turkey was subjected to a "deep and nefarious" siege as today the country is once again and more strongly fighting its War of Independence, which was launched a century ago.

He added that Turkey aims to be one of the world's top 10 economies, and achieving so would be the greatest gift to Ataturk, who mobilized the Turkish nation against occupying forces and established the republic from scraps.

Like Turkey's founding government after the end of the War of Independence in 1923, the country is again focusing on its economy, Erdogan said, though adding that international financial and political organizations were not assessing Turkey objectively.

He noted that with the foundation of the republic and despite threats and pressure from Western countries, Ataturk abolished the economic privileges given by the Ottomans to foreign merchants, known as capitulations, that had played a significant role in the empire's collapse.

Erdogan added that some now sought to use interest and exchange rates, as well as inflation, as a new form of capitulations, but Turkey is determined to fight such policies while complying with the principle of free trade and with the realities of the global financial system in mind.

Ataturk became the first president of the republic until Nov. 10, 1938, when he passed away in Istanbul at the age of 57 due to cirrhosis disease. 

As a tradition, Turkish people visit Ataturk's mausoleum in Ankara every Nov. 10 and pay tributes to him, and the daily life stops at 9.05 a.m. local time, sirens wail to mark the exact moment of Ataturk’s passing, with millions of people across the country observing two minutes of silence.

*Writing by Gozde Bayar,Dilan Pamuk and Ali Murat Alhas