Today in History – 28 October

Preparing for the proclamation of the Republic

A day before the proclamation of the Republic, on the evening of October 28, 1923, Mustafa Kemal had gathered a crowded group for dinner at Çankaya. The guests included İsmet Pasha, Kâzım Karabekir, Fethi (Okyar), and Ruşen eşref (Ünaydın). Mustafa Kemal discussed, for the first time, his designs for the next day. The dinner in question and the subsequent developments are conveyed in Nutuk as follows: “During dinner, I said, ‘We will proclaim the Republic tomorrow.’ The present company immediately agreed with me. We stopped dinner. As of that moment, I put together a small program and instructed my colleagues on how to proceed…

Our friends left early that night. Only İsmet Pasha was staying over as my guest at Çankaya. When we were alone, we drafted a bill. At the end of the first article that identifies the from of state of the Constitution of January 20, 1921, we added the clause, “The State of Turkey is a Republic.”