Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in 2015: The Minarets Are the Bayonets, the Mosques Are Our Barracks, The Believers Are the Soldiers! From the Battle of Manzikert to Gallipoli -Unity of Belief Leads to Victory [Archival]

In a speech he gave on May 4, 2015 in the Turkish province of Siirt, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan recited a modified version of a poem by early 20th-century Turkish nationalist writer and politician Ziya Gökalp. Erdoğan recited: "The minarets are the bayonets, the domes are the helmets, the mosques are our barracks, the believers are the soldiers!" It is noteworthy that Erdoğan recited this poem in 1997 as mayor of Istanbul at a political rally that had also been in Siirt, and he was subsequently imprisoned for four months and ten days.

Tayyip Erdoğan: "The minarets are the bayonets, the domes are the helmets. The mosques are our barracks, the believers are the soldiers. Nothing can intimidate me – if the heavens and the earth open, and floods and volcanoes are spilled over us, we are thus! Our ancestors of whose faith we boast never kneeled to things that caused trembling. From Manzikert, the gate of victories, the deed of Anatolia, and all the way to Gallipoli, the impassable stronghold of faith, the thing that causes us to run from victory to victory is the unity of belief that we are in now."