{"id":283760,"date":"2026-03-15T12:00:52","date_gmt":"2026-03-15T12:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/halkweb.com.tr\/?p=283760"},"modified":"2026-03-15T12:00:52","modified_gmt":"2026-03-15T12:00:52","slug":"the-spirit-of-the-national-anthem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/halkweb.com.tr\/en\/the-spirit-of-the-national-anthem\/","title":{"rendered":"The Spirit of the National Anthem"},"content":{"rendered":"

The writer of the National Anthem Mehmet Akif Ersoy<\/strong>, is a scholar who speaks Arabic.
\nHe speaks Farsi.
\nKnows Ottoman Turkish.<\/p>\n

But the anthem He wrote in Turkish.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Why?<\/p>\n

Because that anthem He was addressing the Turkish nation.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Akif could have written those great verses in Arabic.
\nBut he did not write.<\/p>\n

Because the National Anthem is not a text of ummah.
\nOne is the text of the nation.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI have lived free since time immemorial, I will live free\u201d<\/p>\n

The power of the line is not only in its meaning, In the spirit of Turkish<\/strong> it's secret.<\/p>\n

The moment you translate those verses into another language, you shatter that soul.<\/p>\n

What Does the National Anthem Recited in Arabic Mean?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Now we need to ask the fundamental question:<\/p>\n

Why is the National Anthem sung in Arabic?<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is not a work of translation.<\/p>\n

It is not an academic activity.<\/p>\n

This is a direct is an ideological choice.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This choice tells us this:<\/p>\n

For some circles Turkish identity is secondary.<\/strong><\/p>\n

For them, the priority is a cultural and political It is the imagination of Arabization.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This mentality has emerged in different forms throughout the history of the Republic.<\/p>\n

A period of Ottoman nostalgia,
\nwith a period of ummah romanticism,
\nand a period of cultural inferiority complex.<\/p>\n

But the result is always the same:<\/p>\n

Pushing Turkish identity to the background.<\/p>\n

The real scandal is silence<\/strong><\/p>\n

The most grave aspect of this event is not that it is read in Arabic.<\/p>\n

The real scandal is this:<\/p>\n

The officials in the protocol watched this in silence.<\/strong><\/p>\n

No one intervened.
\nNobody said, \u201cThis is wrong.\u201d.
\nNobody stopped the program.<\/p>\n

This situation shows us that:<\/p>\n

Some bureaucratic mechanisms in Turkey into an unprincipled comfort zone<\/strong> has been withdrawn.<\/p>\n

Nobody wants to take risks.<\/p>\n

Nobody wants to argue.<\/p>\n

No one shows \u201cstate seriousness\u201d.<\/p>\n

But what you call a state is sometimes is a matter of posture.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Karaman's Historical Irony<\/strong><\/p>\n

This event Living in Karaman<\/strong> is also thought-provoking.<\/p>\n

Because Karaman is a symbolic city in terms of Turkish language.<\/p>\n

The famous edict issued by Karamanoglu Mehmet Bey in 1277 reads as follows:<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom today onwards, no language other than Turkish will be used in the divan, dervish lodge, bargah, assembly and square.\u201d<\/p>\n

This edict is a turning point in the history of Turkish language.<\/p>\n

Now think about it:<\/p>\n

In one of the symbol cities of the tradition that declared Turkish as the state language,
\nNational Anthem It is taught in Arabic.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is not just a contradiction.<\/p>\n

This is a historical is not irony, it is tragedy.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Question of Cultural Identity<\/strong><\/p>\n

A significant part of the debate in Turkey today is not really about economics or politics.<\/p>\n

Main discussion is a debate on identity.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Will Turkey become a modern nation state,
\nor is it a culturally disoriented geography?<\/p>\n

The answer to this question lies in language.<\/p>\n

If Turkish is strong, Turkey is strong.<\/p>\n

If Turkish is retreating, Turkey will also retreat.<\/p>\n

Honor of an Anthem<\/strong><\/p>\n

The National Anthem is not an ordinary poem.<\/p>\n

That anthem:<\/p>\n

In Sakarya,
\nIn Dumlupinar,
\nIt is the sound of blood spilled in \u0130n\u00f6n\u00fc.<\/p>\n

When the language of that anthem is changed, not only the words change.<\/p>\n

History is also damaged.<\/strong><\/p>\n

If a nation cannot protect the language of its anthem,
\nand he cannot take care of his future.<\/p>\n

The incident in Karaman is not a small incident.<\/p>\n

This incident shows us that cultural and ideological struggles are still ongoing in Turkey.<\/p>\n

A Turkish for one side civilization project.<\/strong><\/p>\n

For the other side, there is only one is a tool.<\/strong><\/p>\n

But it should not be forgotten:<\/p>\n

If a nation does not protect its own language,
\nthe language of others begins to write his destiny.<\/p>\n

And a day comes,
\nnations don't even have their own anthems. cannot read in their own language.<\/strong><\/p>\n

When that day comes, it is not only language that is lost.<\/p>\n

What is lost is the soul of a nation.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Language is the Memory of a Nation: On the National Anthem Scandal in Karaman<\/strong><\/p>\n

The existence of a nation is not measured by land alone.
\nIt has a flag, it has a history, but there is an invisible backbone that connects them all: language.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

For this very reason National Anthem<\/strong> is not just a poem.
\nIt is not a text.
\nIt is not a literary work at all.<\/p>\n

The National Anthem is the Turkish nation's is a manifesto of independence.<\/strong><\/p>\n

And that manifesto It is written in Turkish.<\/strong><\/p>\n

But in Turkey, known as the capital of Turkish Karaman<\/strong> An incident in his city turned out to be not just a protocol error, but a sign of a much deeper mental problem.<\/p>\n

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.<\/strong><\/p>\n

What is even more serious is this:
\nOfficials present at the program said and just watched in silence.<\/strong><\/p>\n

At this point it is no longer a school activity.
\nThe issue is not a failure of education.<\/p>\n

Issue It is a question of mentality.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Why was the Language Revolution of the Republic?<\/strong><\/p>\n

One of the most important revolutions in the first years of the Republic was the language revolution.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This revolution was not just a change of alphabet.<\/p>\n

What was actually done was this:<\/p>\n

Creating a modern nation from the remnants of an empire.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the Ottoman Empire, the state language was Ottoman.
\nThere was a gap between the Turkish spoken by the people and the language of the palace.<\/p>\n

The Republic closed this gap.<\/p>\n

The language of the state became the language of the people.<\/p>\n

Turkish is not just a spoken language, the language of thinking<\/strong> has become.<\/p>\n

This is why the founding cadres of the Republic took the language issue very seriously.<\/p>\n

Because they knew:<\/p>\n

If you weaken the language of a nation,
\nthat nation you also weaken the capacity to think.<\/strong><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why is the National Anthem sung in Arabic?<\/p>","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":283761,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[286],"tags":[289],"class_list":{"0":"post-283760","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-yazarlar","8":"tag-manset"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/halkweb.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/halkweb.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/halkweb.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/halkweb.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/halkweb.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283760"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/halkweb.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283760\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":283763,"href":"https:\/\/halkweb.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283760\/revisions\/283763"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/halkweb.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/halkweb.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/halkweb.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/halkweb.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}