The writer of the National Anthem Mehmet Akif Ersoy, is a scholar who speaks Arabic.
He speaks Farsi.
Knows Ottoman Turkish.
But the anthem He wrote in Turkish.
Why?
Because that anthem He was addressing the Turkish nation.
Akif could have written those great verses in Arabic.
But he did not write.
Because the National Anthem is not a text of ummah.
One is the text of the nation.
“I have lived free since time immemorial, I will live free”
The power of the line is not only in its meaning, In the spirit of Turkish it's secret.
The moment you translate those verses into another language, you shatter that soul.
What Does the National Anthem Recited in Arabic Mean?
Now we need to ask the fundamental question:
Why is the National Anthem sung in Arabic?
This is not a work of translation.
It is not an academic activity.
This is a direct is an ideological choice.
This choice tells us this:
For some circles Turkish identity is secondary.
For them, the priority is a cultural and political It is the imagination of Arabization.
This mentality has emerged in different forms throughout the history of the Republic.
A period of Ottoman nostalgia,
with a period of ummah romanticism,
and a period of cultural inferiority complex.
But the result is always the same:
Pushing Turkish identity to the background.
The real scandal is silence
The most grave aspect of this event is not that it is read in Arabic.
The real scandal is this:
The officials in the protocol watched this in silence.
No one intervened.
Nobody said, “This is wrong.”.
Nobody stopped the program.
This situation shows us that:
Some bureaucratic mechanisms in Turkey into an unprincipled comfort zone has been withdrawn.
Nobody wants to take risks.
Nobody wants to argue.
No one shows “state seriousness”.
But what you call a state is sometimes is a matter of posture.
Karaman's Historical Irony
This event Living in Karaman is also thought-provoking.
Because Karaman is a symbolic city in terms of Turkish language.
The famous edict issued by Karamanoglu Mehmet Bey in 1277 reads as follows:
“From today onwards, no language other than Turkish will be used in the divan, dervish lodge, bargah, assembly and square.”
This edict is a turning point in the history of Turkish language.
Now think about it:
In one of the symbol cities of the tradition that declared Turkish as the state language,
National Anthem It is taught in Arabic.
This is not just a contradiction.
This is a historical is not irony, it is tragedy.
The Question of Cultural Identity
A significant part of the debate in Turkey today is not really about economics or politics.
Main discussion is a debate on identity.
Will Turkey become a modern nation state,
or is it a culturally disoriented geography?
The answer to this question lies in language.
If Turkish is strong, Turkey is strong.
If Turkish is retreating, Turkey will also retreat.
Honor of an Anthem
The National Anthem is not an ordinary poem.
That anthem:
In Sakarya,
In Dumlupinar,
It is the sound of blood spilled in İnönü.
When the language of that anthem is changed, not only the words change.
History is also damaged.
If a nation cannot protect the language of its anthem,
and he cannot take care of his future.
The incident in Karaman is not a small incident.
This incident shows us that cultural and ideological struggles are still ongoing in Turkey.
A Turkish for one side civilization project.
For the other side, there is only one is a tool.
But it should not be forgotten:
If a nation does not protect its own language,
the language of others begins to write his destiny.
And a day comes,
nations don't even have their own anthems. cannot read in their own language.
When that day comes, it is not only language that is lost.
What is lost is the soul of a nation.
Language is the Memory of a Nation: On the National Anthem Scandal in Karaman
The existence of a nation is not measured by land alone.
It has a flag, it has a history, but there is an invisible backbone that connects them all: language.
Language is not only a means of communication. Language is the memory of a nation. Language tells how that nation sees the world, how it thinks, how it resists. Therefore, every game played on language is actually a form of cultural engineering.
For this very reason National Anthem is not just a poem.
It is not a text.
It is not a literary work at all.
The National Anthem is the Turkish nation's is a manifesto of independence.
And that manifesto It is written in Turkish.
But in Turkey, known as the capital of Turkish Karaman An incident in his city turned out to be not just a protocol error, but a sign of a much deeper mental problem.
In a program organized at an imam hatip secondary school on the 105th anniversary of the adoption of the National Anthem The National Anthem was sung in Arabic.
What is even more serious is this:
Officials present at the program said and just watched in silence.
At this point it is no longer a school activity.
The issue is not a failure of education.
Issue It is a question of mentality.
Why was the Language Revolution of the Republic?
One of the most important revolutions in the first years of the Republic was the language revolution.
This revolution was not just a change of alphabet.
What was actually done was this:
Creating a modern nation from the remnants of an empire.
In the Ottoman Empire, the state language was Ottoman.
There was a gap between the Turkish spoken by the people and the language of the palace.
The Republic closed this gap.
The language of the state became the language of the people.
Turkish is not just a spoken language, the language of thinking has become.
This is why the founding cadres of the Republic took the language issue very seriously.
Because they knew:
If you weaken the language of a nation,
that nation you also weaken the capacity to think.