The leader of the Turkish far-right Nationalist Movement Party, Devlet Bahceli—a coalition partner of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AKP Party—unleashed an unhinged rant on the occasion of the 953rd anniversary of a battle won by the nomadic Seljuk Turks against the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium) Manzikert (Malazgirt) in far-off 1071.
“I would like to carefully remind those who spread poison through terrorist organizations and those who use cruelty as a guide to avenge the legacy of 953 years of conquest about the miserable state of the Byzantine emperor at Manzikert and the disgraceful fate of the invaders thrown into the sea in Izmir (then Smyrna),” Bahçeli noted in his lengthy statement.
His nationalistic tirade came ahead of the upcoming 102nd anniversary of “Victory Day” on Aug. 30, which marks the victory between Kemalist forces over the Greek army in 1922
The head of the nationalist party also launched a furious attack on the Turkish opposition party CHP, saying that August was a month of victories in Turkish history, reminding his far-right base of “the disgraceful fate of the invaders who were thrown into the sea in Izmir.”
“Remember the invaders who were thrown into the sea in Izmir,” he said, referring to the 1922 burning of the cosmopolitan port city in western Asia Minor, a vibrant metropolis that at the time hosted the most prosperous and millennia-old Greek population in the world.
“On August 30, 1922, Gazi Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and his fellow fighters repelled the invasion and added another glorious victory to history,” Bahceli stated, adding that “they taught a historic lesson to those who dared to test the power of the Turkish nation. The victory at Manzikert and the Great Offensive were two distinct milestones that complemented each other and secured their privileged place in history.”
Echoing Erdogan’s recent bombastic statements, the ultranationalist leader alluded once again to the irredentist and revisionist policy of the “Blue Homeland,” warning that “those who remain in the Turkish homeland and those who calculate against the Turkish nation must not forget that the descendants of Sultan Alp Arslan and the memories of Gazi Mustafa Kemal Atatürk stand with grandeur and enthusiasm.”
