Today is ‘Blessed Friday’

Today is Friday, July 11, 2025. Today, Türkiye woke up to a new morning. Today is a day of peace. Brotherhood. Tranquility. Today is a day of mercy. Today, Türkiye is closing a century filled with blood, tears, and suffering, and opening the page of a new century filled with hope.

For forty uninterrupted years, the spiral of violence—a dirty, bloody civil war—has been coming to an end.

The blaze of discord—paid for in tens of thousands of deaths, trillions of dollars, millions of sufferings, persecution, and tears—is finally dying out.

Türkiye is taking a grand step toward securing its domestic peace—its “yurtta sulh”—with the dignity, reason, and vision befitting the nation.

The terrorist campaign that began in 1984 with the PKK’s attacks on the Eruh and Şemdinli outposts had grown under the pretext of the harsher denial and assimilation policies imposed after the September 12, 1980 coup, alongside widespread torture and oppression. As the state enacted severe measures to protect the country’s unity and integrity, fresh wounds were inflicted, and an unchecked terror spiral—bolstered in part by the nation’s enemies—held Türkiye hostage.

Where politics found itself powerless, where security measures strayed beyond their routine bounds and fears for security held democracy and the rule of law hostage, this spiral began to drain every ounce of the nation’s energy. This process—one that shattered the people’s shared values and collective will—bred anxieties of division along ethnic lines and an erosion of belonging.

Poor, grieving households were struck like burning pyres, and martyr funerals turned the price of defending the homeland into a sorrowful rite of sacrifice. Millions of citizens—unable to live their language, culture, and traditions freely in their own homeland as fully respected hosts alongside their brethren, co-religionists, and fellow citizens, and instead subjected to hostility from their own state—started searching for another home. Just as foreign powers had once incited and provoked other peoples, those who felt like ostracized stepchildren were driven toward the dream of becoming part of another country, state, or nation. This dual rupture and alienation—deepened by acts of terror—fanned the anger of the majority, and that blaze of discord swelled into a wildfire consuming the entire country.

Counterterrorism operations, the constant stream of martyrdom reports, the tally of terrorists neutralized, the trillions spent on the fight, the shattered social peace and brotherhood, the stoked ethnic debates, and the eroding democratic order—this old Türkiye, with its nightmare reel spanning two generations, now belongs to the past.

For the sake of social harmony and fraternity, for the unity and integrity of our nation and state, and to elevate democracy and the rule of law to new heights, now is the moment to awaken from that nightmare.

As the sordid chapter that stole half a century from Türkiye finally closes, the state moves to ensure that our common home—the homeland owned by all—is truly everyone’s property, and that the spirit of brotherhood, unity, and solidarity becomes a shared sense of belonging and responsibility. Now that the weapons of others have fallen silent, the songs of a great, free, and prosperous Türkiye—the people’s true shared weapon—begin to ring out.

From now on, problems will be solved by uprooting the very causes that spawned them. Henceforth, the nation’s shared identity, values, and culture will become a pool of brotherhood that embraces all distinct identities and aspirations. No one will ever be marginalized; no one will posture as the sole rightful host and wag a finger at another. From now on, the state will stand as the guarantor of every citizen’s security and freedom.

This country will bloom into a grand garden of civilization—one in which each citizen belongs with honor, pride, and deep belonging.

From now on… the weapons will fall silent. The blood will cease, and mothers’ tears will dry. Our children will no longer be sacrificed to a dirty war. The accumulated grime of the 20th century will finally be cleansed. Gone will be the ideological, religious, sectarian, and ethnic masks that have become straitjackets—along with the empty demagogues and hollow debates. In their place, the real challenges shared by the whole nation—and by our region and humanity at large—will take center stage: reason, science, technology, a just order, deepened democracy, the rule of law, a productive economy, an advanced defense industry, and modern education, healthcare, and food systems.

When the guns fall silent, only real people and realistic ideas will speak.

Under the leadership of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, with the unwavering support of MHP Chairman Devlet Bahçeli and through the sensitive diplomatic initiative conducted by the head of the National Intelligence Organization (MİT), İbrahim Kalın, the dissolution of the organization and the surrender of its weapons—carried out on the orders issued by PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan to his own ranks—will mark a historic milestone.

This date is the dawn of Türkiye’s transition: closing a tumultuous century with composure and embarking on a new era of greater confidence and hope—no longer at the whim of foreign powers, but propelled by its own strength and will—as it enters the 21st century. A terror-free Türkiye will close the chapter of those who fed on violence and inaugurate an era sustained by democracy and the rule of law. July 11, 2025, also brings a message of mercy to humanity’s yearning for peace and justice—a beacon of hope that another world can be built and that history may be written not by oppressors, but by the oppressed.

Now the bloody, filthy blaze will be extinguished, and in the bright light of this mercy, Türkiye will both debate and resolve its challenges through democratic means and set out to forge a humane civilization that will serve as an example to the entire region and the world.

May today bring goodness and blessings to our country, our nation, all brotherly and comrade peoples, and all oppressed humanity.

May today forever be remembered as the Festival of Brotherhood.