How could one who does not know Gaza know Çanakkale?

May the new academic year be blessed, and may it be a productive, effective and beneficial year on the road to raising generations that are healthier, free in thought, free in mind, free in conscience, and that truly know themselves, their Lord, their nation and their history.

That the new term has begun with a special lesson on the theme "The spirit of independence and love of homeland from Çanakkale to Gaza!" is a meaningful step precisely so that the new generations may truly know and learn themselves, their Lords, their nation and their history. I would like to congratulate Minister of National Education Yusuf Tekin for his self-confidence, courage and determination in deciding to make such a start, paying no heed to the grumblings and discomfort from certain circles.

We are of course not at all surprised by those who target him for this. It is very clear whom and what they are serving by doing so. The inhuman crimes that Zionist occupier Israel has been committing in Gaza for nearly a year should be a first-degree concern for everyone who considers himself a human being. Those who do not see it this way must be regarded as accomplices of genocidal Zionism or, at the very least, as being in heedlessness and misguidance. In either case, these people have nothing to say to anyone.

That they are fiercely resentful of the comparison of Gaza and Çanakkale, as two arenas in which independence and love of homeland are almost embodied, actually shows how alien they are to the spirit of Çanakkale that they supposedly claim as their own. Being distant from Çanakkale, they do not know that Gaza too is a place where Turkey's spirit of independence is embodied. They do not know themselves, so that they might know Palestine. They do not know Çanakkale, so that they might know Gaza. They do not know that the very same defense of the homeland that was given at Çanakkale was also given at Gaza. The British army, stopped twice at Gaza by an epic heroic defense, could bring Gaza down only with great preparations in its 3rd Attack in November 1917. That in this fall it was decisive not only the power of the British but, to a great extent, the internal strife and indiscipline within the Ottoman army has still not been dwelt upon. It seems they need to learn both this and that Çanakkale was breached by enemy forces a year after the fall of Gaza.

The defense of Çanakkale was being carried out from Gaza, and Gaza was as much a part of the homeland as Çanakkale. In Gaza, fighting alongside the people of Gaza themselves were people who came from Anatolia, the Balkans and other Arab lands.

There were traitors too, of course, as in Anatolia, as much as in Anatolia. When there is a war, would there not be traitors as well as heroes? But to use traitors as a pretext to erect, for a century, borders that destroy the fabric that makes a nation a nation, to make them a source of grudge and hatred between those who should be friends and brothers with one another, is itself treachery. It only shows us that the treachery that made us lose the war and an important part of our homeland continues still, as power.

Unfortunately, our national education program is not focused on fusing the different elements of our nation with one another, on making them love one another, on integrating them with one another. Instead of forming an otherness against the nation's real enemies, it has tried to put distances between the nation's fundamental elements.

The "Arab betrayal" talk that some immediately put forward on account of Gaza, for example, has unfortunately been engraved in the minds of generations for years as part of the official discourse. The existence of hundreds of thousands of Arab, Kurdish and Indian Muslims who fought and were martyred as part of this nation's, the Caliphate's army on the Çanakkale, Palestine, Iraq, Hejaz and Yemen Fronts has been ignored, while in return the collaboration of some Arabs with the British has been exaggerated and exaggerated as if it were an event that changed the fate of the war. The betrayals, incompetence and failures of certain Unionist Ottoman officers, which were far more effective and decisive than the betrayal of some Arabs in the collapse of the Palestine front, have been covered up.

So what was the motive behind those betrayals? Their being Jewish, their racism, their blind lust for office, their incompetence, their imprudence, their insubordination? On the Çanakkale and Palestine fronts, for example, there was a considerable Jewish population that had gone over to the British side against us. And there were also those who changed the course of the war through the espionage activities they carried out while working in the Ottoman army. Their betrayal was never dwelt upon, as much as the defection of a handful of Arab bedouins, who also changed sides through their enticement, was dwelt upon.

The Jews, who had taken refuge with the Ottomans when they fled the genocide in Spain and lived for 400 years under Ottoman protection in a security they had seen nowhere else in the world, secretly and treacherously took the side of the Ottomans' enemies both at Çanakkale and on the Gaza-Palestine Front. Their contributions were, moreover, of a kind that would change the course of the war, and after the collapse of the Ottomans they became the masters of the Middle East established on Ottoman lands. From that day to this they have been the perpetrators of all the oppression committed.

Even the Arab regimes that we blame and are angry with today for their betrayals are part of their Zionist order. They have no worth of their own. But nowhere in our National Education curriculum is this truly decisive and destructive betrayal mentioned even with a single word. Instead, our friends and our enemies have been determined precisely as they determined them. That Arabs be enemies to Turks, Turks to Arabs, or Kurds to each of them has been a requirement of this Zionist program. Everything is proceeding exactly as those traitors, those occupiers planned. Of course, resisting this will be possible first of all by rewriting history anew and correctly.

Gaza is precisely the place where this valiant nation fell. It is also the place where it will rise to its feet. Teaching Gaza as the first lesson of the year is, above all, a humane matter for today. Not remaining indifferent to a place where such a great crime against humanity is being committed should be the first lesson a student can take. But it should also be seen and learned as a magnificent example of a people's defense of their homeland unto death. The people of Gaza today are teaching all of humanity love of homeland, defense and freedom. Rather than remaining stuck in mythological narratives that have no validity, we need to take lessons from the epic that is being lived today. The bridge extending from Çanakkale, where a real epic was written, to Gaza must be seen.

Therefore the second part of the matter concerns the correction of our consciousness of history, our consciousness of nation. We have a mythological understanding of history, utterly detached from realities, and far more distant from humane and national values than is supposed. When we attempt to correct this, the grumblings, noise and attacks from those sections whose brains have until now been washed by the Zionist program are an inevitable part of a struggle that is bound to be waged. Whatever anyone says, there is no turning back from this road, at the end of which lies a true awakening.