Türkiye on Sunday marked the 104th anniversary of the Battle of Dumlupınar, which cemented the success of the Turkish War of Independence in the post-World War I country.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and dignitaries paid tribute to martyrs and Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, founder of the Republic of Türkiye, on the occasion observed as Victory Day.
In a message, Erdoğan noted that nefarious plots were still afoot against Türkiye and the wider region 104 years later and vowed that they would not let them succeed. “We are decisively standing up for the independence and future of our nation,” Erdoğan wrote in a memorial notebook at Atatürk’s mausoleum in Ankara, which he visited with the Cabinet and military brass.
Atatürk, a seasoned officer, was commander-in-chief at the battle in 1922 and personally commanded a war-weary army in present-day Kütahya, where the battlefield was located. Eventually, Turkish forces defeated the invading Greek forces, pushing them farther west. The battle was the penultimate episode of Büyük Taarruz, or the Great Offensive, a campaign led by Ankara-based Atatürk, who mobilized the nation amid the collapse of the Ottoman Empire to save the country by forcing out the invading forces.
