After Turkish Military Academy Graduates Vow With Swords Drawn To Defend 'Secular, Democratic' Turkey, President Erdoğan Promises Investigation: 'It Is Not Possible For Them To Be In Our Army'

On August 31, 2024, a video was uploaded to X showing a crowd of Turkish soldiers in dress uniform with swords drawn. They begin by chanting: "We are the soldiers of Mustafa Kemal." A child then leads the soldiers in reciting: "We swear an oath that our swords will always be sharp and ready and that those hands that reach out [to take] the independence of the secular, democratic Republic of Turkey, the indivisible integrity of the country, the honor and virtue of the sublime Turkish nation, or one handbreadth of the glorious homeland, will find us against them. We are the sons of the Turkish future. We were born with our honor, we live with our honor, and we will die with our honor. How happy is the one who says 'I am a Turk'!"[1]

Along with the video, the X user who uploaded it wrote: "I asked some authorities about what happened at the lieutenants' oath ceremony. This is not in an official context. What was done is against the rules of military discipline." The video, which has 3,900,000 views, was reportedly taken at a lieutenants' graduation ceremony at the Turkish Military Academy on August 30, which in Turkey is celebrated as Victory Day and commemorates the anniversary of the end of the Great Offensive, which, under the leadership of the republic's founder Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, ended the Turkish War of Independence and was also the largest operation in the war.

In a September 7 speech at a convention of graduates of the Islamic high schools that train the country's imams, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said: "The other day, apparently, at a graduation ceremony, some exploiters appeared and drew swords. Against whom do you draw these swords?... The necessary investigation is being conducted and a few people there who do not know their place will be removed... We did not get here by sitting around. It might be 30 people, it might be 50; whoever it is, it is not possible for them to be in our army."[2]

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who founded the Republic of Turkey on secularist nationalist principles following World War I, first used the phrase "happy is the one who says 'I am a Turk'!" which the soldiers recite in the video, in an October 29, 1933 speech on the occasion of the 10th Anniversary of the founding of the republic. In 1972, Turkey's Education Ministry made the phrase the last line in the Student Oath, which, recited for many years every day to begin the day at Turkish schools, is the equivalent of the Pledge of Allegiance. President Erdoğan's Islamist government, which largely opposes Atatürk's secularist vision for Turkey, annulled this oath in 2013.[3] In 2018, the 2013 decision was cancelled, and in 2021, the 2018 decision was cancelled.[4] In 1960, 1971, 1980, and 1997, the Turkish military overturned civilian Turkish governments in part on the grounds that they had drifted too far from the country's secularist founding principles. It is generally accepted that in July 2016, a faction within the Turkish military tried and failed to overturn Erdoğan's government.