From the Lines of Nutuk to the Present Day: The Story of a Nation That Became the Host of Its Own Home
By Prof. Dr. Tansel Tercan
The greatest stories of world literature always begin with a setting out. In Homer’s epic, Odysseus takes to the seas to return home. The tales of Dede Korkut are woven from a journey, a trial and a return. Our own greatest story also begins with a setting out. Mustafa Kemal opens the first sentence of Nutuk (The Speech) like this:
“On the 19th day of May 1919, I landed at Samsun.”
A plain, short, unadorned sentence. Yet it holds the destiny of a nation. Every time I read this sentence, I recall my profession’s favourite word: misafir, the guest. In Turkish this word comes from the root “sefer”, the journey; it describes a person who has set out on the road, grown weary, yet keeps walking to reach a door. The one who landed at Samsun in 1919 was a traveller too. But what this traveller sought was not a door that would welcome him. What he sought was the key to the home a nation was about to lose.
Every great story begins with a setting out; this nation’s greatest story began with a steamer bound for Samsun.
Nutuk paints the picture of those days with a heavy sentence: “All that remained was a homeland of our forefathers in which a handful of Turks found shelter.” This sentence describes not a map but the condition of a home. A home with foreign soldiers at its door, other people’s rules in its rooms, other people’s calculations in its kitchen.
One of the concepts that best explains this picture is the capitulations. Over the centuries the privileges granted to foreigners had reached such a point that the foreign merchant living on these lands was tried under his own law, paid his own taxes and ran his own post office. The host could not set the rules in his own home. To put it more painfully: this nation had been turned into a guest, even a tenant, in its own home.
A nation that is a guest in its own home cannot host anyone.
In those days some of the intellectuals were seeking a remedy in placing the country under the protection of a great power. Nutuk describes this search openly, and Mustafa Kemal rejects these proposals one by one. “Accepting the protection and patronage of a foreign state” is for him not a solution but a surrender. He states his reason in a sentence that speaks to all times:
“The essential thing is that the Turkish nation should live as a nation with dignity and honour.”
To me, this sentence is the heart of Nutuk. Because here the matter is not land, borders or regime; it is dignity. And dignity is not something a person can give up. That is why the watchword that follows is so sharp: “Therefore, either independence or death!” Nutuk says that this would be “the watchword of those who desire true salvation.”
Dignity is not an item open to bargaining.
And then comes one of the most decisive sentences in Nutuk: “In the face of this situation, there was only one decision.” That decision was to found a new Turkish state, based on national sovereignty and unconditionally independent. Whenever I read this, I always think: great decisions are usually born not from long lists but from a single clear sentence. A sentence spoken in the face of all difficulties, all impossibilities: there was only one decision.
A struggle that lasted four years. Congresses, fronts, privations, martyrs. The Assembly opened on 23 April 1920. Sakarya, the Great Offensive, İzmir. And with the Treaty of Lausanne signed on 24 July 1923, the abolition of the capitulations. In other words, the keys to this nation’s home were passing back into its own hands after centuries.
But one thing was missing. The key to the home had been taken back; now the home had to be given its name.
The Republic is the day a nation takes the key to its own home back into its hands.
The evening of 28 October 1923, Çankaya. Mustafa Kemal is at dinner with his close companions. Nutuk recounts that moment in a sentence plainer and more striking than any history book. He turns to those at the table and says:
“Tomorrow we will proclaim the Republic.”
The power of this sentence lies in its simplicity. The decision that would change a nation’s centuries-old form of government is announced at a dinner, in a sentence of just four words in Turkish. The wording to be added to the Law on Fundamental Organisation the next day is drafted with the same simplicity: “The form of government of the State of Türkiye is the Republic.”
29 October 1923. A brief debate in the Assembly. A vote. And, in the words of Nutuk, the decision is taken at 8.30 in the evening; the Republic “was proclaimed with a salute of one hundred and one guns.” That night, in the streets of Ankara, those guns thundered one hundred and one times. Each one announced to the world that a nation had become the host of its own home.
History’s greatest decisions are sometimes made at a dinner table, in a single sentence.
To read this story only as our own story would do it an injustice. Because 29 October is an answer given to one of humanity’s oldest and most universal longings: the longing to determine one’s own destiny.
The Roman thinker Cicero defines the state as “res publica”, that is, “the affair of the people”. The root of the word for republic in Western languages comes from here. The Turkish word “cumhur” also means the people. In other words, the Republic is the name of the order in which power belongs not to one person, a dynasty or a clique, but to the people.
In his famous essay written in 1784, Immanuel Kant defines enlightenment as “man’s emergence from his self-incurred immaturity.” Immaturity is the inability to use one’s own understanding without the guidance of another. Seen from this angle, the Republic is a nation’s declaration of adulthood. From now on it will make its decisions not on behalf of a sovereign or a protecting power, but with its own reason and its own will.
The thinker Hannah Arendt, for her part, says that the greatest capacity that makes a human being human is “the ability to make a new beginning.” For her, every true founding is the courage to bring something new into the world. 29 October is exactly that: a brand-new beginning from among the ruins.
Before it is a regime, the Republic is a nation’s declaration of adulthood.
Now I come to the part of this story that touches me most, as a tourism professional.
Only one week after the Republic was proclaimed, on Mustafa Kemal’s instruction, the Türk Seyyahin Cemiyeti (Turkish Travellers’ Society) was founded under the presidency of Reşit Saffet Atabinen. The mission of this society, which would later take the name Turkish Touring and Automobile Association, was to introduce the new Türkiye to the world and to develop tourism in the country.
Just think. A nation that had taken back the key to its home only a week earlier opens its door to the world as its very first act. A state whose wounds were not yet dressed, whose budget was meagre and whose institutions were new says “Welcome” to the world.
There is only one explanation for this: true hospitality is something only a free host can offer. One who has no say in his own home cannot invite anyone in. A home where other people’s rules hold sway at the door cannot lay a table for its guest. But a nation that is the master of its own home can open its door as widely as possible; because now it alone decides when, to whom and how that door will be opened.
Only one who is master of his own home can open its door to the world.
The capital’s first great hotel, Ankara Palas, also rose in this spirit. Construction began in 1924 and was completed in 1928. Directly opposite the first Assembly building, it hosted the deputies coming to the Assembly and the guests of the state. The new Türkiye showed its modern face to its guests in these halls. That it still serves today as the state’s official guesthouse shows that the spirit of those first days lives on.
Nor is the bond between the Republic and hospitality limited to this. The fundamental principle of the Republic is equality; no distinction of lineage, class or title is made among citizens. The fundamental principle of good hotelkeeping is the same: everyone who walks through the door deserves the same care and the same respect. When women were granted the right to vote and stand for parliament in 1934, many countries of the world had not yet granted this right. Today every woman who stands by her labour in tourism’s kitchens, at its reception desks, in its housekeeping and in its management ranks is a living part of this legacy.
Hospitality is the hand a free nation extends to the world.
In the tenth year of the Republic, in 1933, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk looks back and says: “In a short time we have accomplished many and great things.” In the same speech he sets the goal of raising our national culture above the level of contemporary civilisation. This goal is not a summit to be reached once and then left behind. It is a standard that every generation, every professional group, every person must reach anew in their own field.
Nutuk, for its part, ends the whole narrative with a trust bequeathed to the youth: “O Turkish Youth! Your primary duty is to preserve and defend Turkish independence and the Turkish Republic forever. This is the very foundation of your existence and your future. This foundation is your most precious treasure.”
The word in this sentence that moves me most is “treasure”. A treasure is protected, yes. But the best way to protect a treasure is to put it to work, to make it grow, and to leave it more valuable to the next generation. A cook teaching his craft to his apprentice, a teacher nurturing the curiosity in a child’s eyes, an engineer building a sound bridge, a tourism professional presenting this country to a foreigner at its most beautiful; all of these are ways of protecting this treasure by putting it to work.
A treasure is protected; but it is best protected by being put to work.
The Republic is 103 years old. Flags have been hung, guns fired, anthems sung. But on this anniversary I keep returning to the sentence from that dinner: “Tomorrow we will proclaim the Republic.”
Why “tomorrow” and not “today”? Perhaps the real secret of this sentence lies hidden here. The Republic is not an event proclaimed once and finished. Every generation proclaims it anew in its own “tomorrow”. Every person who does their work properly, every manager who decides with justice, every master who shares knowledge, every host who opens the door without discrimination has proclaimed the Republic anew.
One hundred and three years ago, the key to a nation’s home passed back into its own hands. Keeping that home’s door open to the world, its rooms bright and its table bountiful is the trust placed in us.
Happy Republic Day.
Every generation proclaims the Republic anew in its own “tomorrow”.