Turkey

This entry is about the country; for the bird, see Turkeys.

Turkey (Turkish: Türkiye), officially the Republic of Türkiye, is a Eurasian country that stretches across the Anatolian peninsula in southwestern Asia and the Balkan region of southeastern Europe. The modern Republic of Turkey was formed by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after World War I. It is a founding member of NATO and is a candidate for membership in the European Union. Its current head of state is President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Hereunder is the Student Oath that all Turkish students had to recite at the beginning of each schoolday until 2013. The original was written in 1933 by Reşit Galip, the Minister of Education at the time. It has been changed a few times since then, the version that follows is from 1997. "How happy is the one who says I am a Turk" (Ne mutlu Türküm diyene) is a quote from a speech by Atatürk. The references to Atatürk were not present in the original, they were added in 1972, by then the Turkish military had performed two coups (in 1960 and 1971), partly due to them fearing the country was veering away from Atatürk's ideals. (In the past, the Turkish military traditionally viewed itself as a guardian of Atatürk's legacy.)

• I am a Turk, honest and hardworking.
  My principle is to protect the younger, to respect the elder, to love my homeland and my nation more than myself.
  My ideal is to rise, to progress.
  O Great Atatürk!
  On the path that you have paved, I swear to walk incessantly toward the aims that you have set.
  Let my existence be a gift to the Turkish existence.
  
  How happy is the one who says "I am a Turk!"
  
  Original:
  Türk'üm, doğruyum, çalışkanım,
  İlkem: küçüklerimi korumak, büyüklerimi saymak, yurdumu, milletimi özümden çok sevmektir.
  Ülküm: yükselmek, ileri gitmektir.
  Ey Büyük Atatürk!
  Açtığın yolda, gösterdiğin hedefe durmadan yürüyeceğime ant içerim.
  Varlığım Türk varlığına armağan olsun.
  
  Ne mutlu Türk'üm diyene!

• …O Turkish child of future generations! As you see, even under these circumstances and conditions, it is your duty to save the Turkish Independence and the Republic! The strength that you will need is present in the noble blood which flows in your veins!
  • Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Address To Turkish Youth (20 October 1927)

• The Republic of Turkey cannot be a country of sheikhs, dervishes, and disciples. The truest, most real order is the order of civilisation.
  • Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, as quoted in Atatürk'ün Söylev ve Demeçleri, Volume II, p. 215

• The torch that the Turkish nation holds in her hand and in her mind, while marching on the road of progress and civilisation, is positive sciences.
  • Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, speech on the tenth anniversary of the Republic, 1933

• Turkey's true master is the peasant.
  • Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, as quoted in U.S.A. Toddler Importing as a Turkish Businessman by Thomas Chi, OilUSA.Co, 1 June 2011, p. 27

• …He is a weak ruler who needs religion to uphold his government; it is as if he would catch his people in a trap. My people are going to learn the principles of democracy, the dictates of truth and the teachings of science. Superstition must go. Let them worship as they will; every man can follow his own conscience, provided it does not interfere with sane reason or bid him against the liberty of his fellow-men.
  • Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, as quoted in Atatürk: The Biography of the founder of Modern Turkey, by Andrew Mango; "In a book published in 1928, Grace Ellison quotes [Atatürk], presumably in 1926-27", Grace Ellison Turkey Today (London: Hutchinson, 1928)

• Turks can be killed, but they can never be conquered.
  • Napoleon Bonaparte, as quoted in Napoleon: In His Own Words (1916)

• Turkey had been our ally in the World War. Its unfortunate result was as heavy a burden for Turkey as it was for us. The great and ingenious reconstructor of the new Turkey gave his Allies, beaten by fate, the first example of resurrection. While Turkey, thanks to the realistic attitude of her State leadership, preserved her independent attitude Yugoslavia fell a victim to British intrigues.
  • Adolf Hitler, addressed to the Reichstag on 4 May 1941.

• “…the planet from which the little prince came is the asteroid known as B-612. This asteroid has only once been seen through a telescope. That was by a Turkish astronomer, in 1909. On making his discovery, the astronomer had presented it to the International Astronomical Congress, in a great demonstration. But he was in Turkish costume, and so nobody would believe what he said. …Fortunately, however, for the reputation of Asteroid B-612, a Turkish dictator made a law that his subjects, under pain of death, should change to European costume. So in 1920 the astronomer gave his demonstration all over again, dressed with impressive style and elegance. And this time everybody accepted his report.”
  • The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (translated by Katherine Woods), Piccolo Books in association with Heinemann, Pan Books, London, 1974 (first 1945). Quoted in Talageri, S. (2000). The Rigveda: A historical analysis. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.

• I hate calumny so much that I do not want even to impute foolishness to the Turks, although I detest them as tyrants over women and enemies of the arts.
  • Voltaire, The Philosophical Dictionary selected and translated by H.I. Woolf (1924)

• We became acquainted we found the people, whether Christian or Turkish, prevailingly of a friendly, kindly, progressive type, as is often the case with simple-minded people in times of peace.
  • George Edward White (1940). Adventuring with Anatolia College. Herald-Register. pp. p. 18. 

• I always liked the common Turkish people unless they were stirred to passion by militarists.
  • George Edward White (1940). Adventuring with Anatolia College. Herald-Register. pp. p. 18. 

• In the College two classes were called preparatory, while four bore the ordinary college class names. The schools from which our students came did not carry them far. When Americans first came to Turkey, hardly any vernacular was taught anywhere. Instruction was in classic tongues and religious lore. But our students for the most part came with a purpose in modern life. They wanted to attain a worth-while and useful manhood and they felt that the College could give them a start.
  • George Edward White (1940). Adventuring with Anatolia College. Herald-Register. pp. p. 19. 

• One student told me in after years that when he came to Marsovan [a city in Turkey] he was really illiterate, that is, he could not fairly read his native tongue, or any other. But he had no chance of learning more in his native village. For a number of months he was cow-boy for an American family, and eagerly studying too.
  • George Edward White (1940). Adventuring with Anatolia College. Herald-Register. pp. p. 19. 

• Another time I was riding alone with a Circassian, and in the talk of man to man in such companionship, asked him a bit about his occupation and his affairs. "Sometimes I get a traveller to escort, like you", he replied, "and then I take him, but my regular business is smuggling tobacco. Every man in our village has a regular job, some are smugglers, some are farmers, and some are thieves". I asked him about his chance of getting caught, and he promptly said, "There are two kinds of smugglers; one kind gets caught and one kind doesn't get caught", and he added a pious expression of gratitude to the good Lord that he never had been put to shame yet. We knew very well that the mounted police of Anatolia were largely recruited from among the robbers and smugglers of the mountain roads. One of the most effective ways of securing official employment, and who knows what promotion later, was to acquire the reputation of a daring hold-up man on the mountains."
  • George Edward White (1940). Adventuring with Anatolia College. Herald-Register. pp. p. 25. 

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 823.

• The unspeakable Turk should be immediately struck out of the question, and the country be left to honest European guidance.
  • Thomas Carlyle, letter to a meeting at St. James Hall, London, 1876. See also his article on 'Das Niebelungen Lied in Westminster Review. 1831. No. 29. Also his Letter to George Howard, Nov. 24, 1876.

• [Turks] one and all, bag and baggage, shall I hope clear out from the province they have desolated and profaned.
  • William Gladstone, speech (May 7, 1877).

• The Lofty Gate of the Royal Tent.
  • Mahomet II. It was translated "La Porte Sublima" by the Italians. See E. S. Creasy, History of the Ottoman Turks, p. 96, ed. 1877.

• [The Ottoman Empire] whose sick body was not supported by a mild and regular diet, but by a powerful treatment, which continually exhausted it.
  • Montesquieu, Persian Letters, I, 19.

• We have on our hands a sick man,—a very sick man. [The sick man of Europe, the Turk.]
  • Nicholas I, of Russia. Conversation with Sir George Hamilton Seymour. (1853). See Blue Book (1854).

• [The Ottoman Empire] has the body of a sick old man, who tried to appear healthy, although his end was near.
  • Sir Thomas Roe, Ambassador to Constantinople. See Buchanan, Letter, 375.

• Your Majesty may think me an impatient sick man, and that the Turks are even sicker.
  • Voltaire to Catherine II. In the Rundschau (April, 1878).

• European Union

• Encyclopedic article on Turkey on Wikipedia
• The dictionary definition of Turkey on Wiktionary
• Media related to Turkey on Wikimedia Commons
• Works related to Category:Turkey on Wikisource
• "Ottoman Anatolia: #5: Mountain life (1892)", George Baloglou, Associate Professor of Mathematics, State University of New York - Oswego