Justice, Education and Freedom… Almost every developed or developing country suffers from problems regarding at least one of these three pillars of democracy. Those who don’t have any of these do fight for them; those who already have them give efforts to improve them in the best possible way. And those who lost these values go into a deep mourning.
April 23rd, 1920, when Ataturk and his comrades in arms established a new parliament was the crowning moment of humanity’s 100-year efforts to achieve democracy. In his 1859 book “On Liberty”, John Stuart Mill explains in detail the reason for humanity’s fight for freedom.
“It is unjust to deprive anyone of his personal liberty, his property, or any other thing which belongs to him by law. It is just to respect, unjust to violate, the legal rights of anyone.”
I always say to everyone, “Turkey has a bright future ahead…” for a couple of reasons. First, Turkish people are capable of easily adapting to different circumstances. Therefore, there’s no need to take an entirely positive or negative approach to things.
Secondly, Turkish people tend to forget things in the long run even though they talk about it a lot in a short period of time. This is not a problem about memory because they don’t even keep things that happened in mind. I’m talking about a nation that doesn’t like to focus on the negative, always looking at the future instead. 56% of Turks answered that they believe Turkey will create a bright future to a survey question “What do you think the future will be like?” while a significant part of the survey participants said, “We don’t care”.
“Let’s Stick to the Founding Principles of our Republic…”
The third reason is Turkish people’s strength to overcome difficulties. Over the course of history, Turks have always known how to get out of bad situations without a scratch, so terrible situations that if they were faced by any other country, those countries would be collapsed by now.
And the fourth reason is that Ataturk’s Republic has strong foundations. If it didn’t, Turkey would be no different that Middle Eastern countries today. Therefore, Turkey knows where it belongs.
Turkey’s future may seem a bit cloudy today, but it will eventually brighten up. All we need to do is to always remember the founding principles of Turkish Republic. Today, I once again remember Mustafa Kemal Atatürk with deepest respect and gratitude.
