Republic's Tenth Anniversary Speech

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SPEECH DELIVERED BY ATATURK ON THE TENTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE FOUNDATION OF THE REPUBLIC

The Turkish Nation!

We are in the fifteenth year of the start of our way of liberation. This 
is the greatest day marking the tenth year of our Republic.

May it be celebrated.

At his moment, as a member of the great Turkish nation, I feel the 
deepest joy and excitement for having achieved this happy day.

My citizens,

We have accomplished many and great tasks in a short time. The greatest of
these is the Turkish Republic, the basis of which is the Turkish vallancy 
and the great Turkish culture.

We owe this achievement to the cooperative progress of the Turkish nation and
its valuable army.  However, we can never consider what we have achieved 
to be sufficient, because we must, and are determined to, accomplish even 
more and greater tasks. We shall raise our country to the level of the
most prosperous and civilised nations of the world. We shall endow our nation
with the broadest means and sources of welfare. We shall raise our 
national culture above the contemporary level of civilisation.

Thus, we should judge the measure of time not according to the lax 
mentality of past centuries, but in terms of the concepts of speed and 
movement of our century.

Compared to the past, we shall work harder. We shall perform greater 
tasks in a shorter time. I have no doubt that we shall succeed in this, 
because the Turkish nation is of excellent character. The Turkish nation 
is intelligent, because the Turkish nation is capable of overcoming 
difficulties of national unity, and because it holds the torch of 
positive sciences.

I must make it clear with due emphasis, that a historical quality of the
Turkish nation, which is an exalted human community, is its love for fine 
arts and progress in them. This is why our national ideal is to constantly 
foster and promote, with all means and measures, our nation's excellent 
character, its tireless industriousness, intelligence, devotion to 
science, love for fine arts and sense of national unity.

This ideal, which very well suits the Turkish nation, will enable it to 
succeed in performing the civilised task falling on it in securing true 
peace for all mankind.

The Great Turkish Nation, you have heard me speak on many occasions over the
last fifteen years promising success in the tasks we undertook. I am 
happy that none of my promises have been false ones which could have 
shaken my nation's confidence in me.

Today, I repeat with the same faith and determination that is will soon be
acknowledged once again by the entire civilised world that the Turkish 
nation, who has been progressing towards the national ideal in exact 
unison, is a great nation. Never have doubted that the great, but 
forgotten, civilised characteristic and the great civilised talents of 
the Turkish nation, will, in its progress henceforth, rise like a new sun 
from the high horizon of civilisation for the future.

The Turkish nation,

I express my heartfelt wish that you will celebrate, after each decade 
elapsing into eternity, this great national day, in greater honour, 
happiness, peace and prosperity.

How happy is the one who says "I am a Turk."
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