Today, May 19, Turkey celebrates the 107th anniversary of one of the most important events in its history.
Modern.az reports that this date is one of the most important national holidays related to the beginning of the Turkish War of Independence.
On May 19, 1919, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk landed with the steamer “Bandırma” in the port of Samsun on the Black Sea coast. The historical conditions of that period were extremely difficult for the former Ottoman Empire: the country had lost the First World War, the Entente forces had occupied key regions, including Istanbul and Izmir, the army was almost disbanded, and the sultan's government had practically accepted foreign control. The landing in Samsun is considered a turning point where scattered local resistance gradually turned into an organized national movement.
The political significance of this step was the beginning of a completely new course - a transition from capitulation to struggle and the formation of national resistance with the slogan “Either independence or death”. Mustafa Kemal Pasha was sent to Anatolia as a military inspector with broad powers, but he later admitted that the Istanbul authorities had approved these powers without fully understanding his true intentions. After arriving in the region, he began to unite the people and the remnants of the army and tried to gradually implement the plan for a future independent state.
For a foreign audience, May 19 is one of the key dates for understanding modern Turkey. It was after the events in Samsun that the process of disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, which had existed for centuries, accelerated (this process had already begun after the defeat in the First World War and the Mudros Armistice) and the current borders of the Republic of Turkey were formed.
In modern Turkey, this date is officially celebrated as “Commemoration of Atatürk, Youth and Sports Day” and symbolizes the starting point of modern national identity for Turkish society.
