Today in History – 29 October

The Republic is proclaimed

A new leaf was turned in Turkey on October 29, 1923 and the first article of the Constituion was changed as “The State of Turkey is a Republic” by the Grand National Assembly of Turkey.

After the amendement was made amindst cheers of “Long Live the Republic,” Mustafa Kemal was unanimously elected by deputies as the first President of the Turkish 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 movement, I put together a small program and inytucted my colleagues on how to proceed…

Gentlemen, as you see, I saw no need to invite all our friends in Ankara and discuss with them my decision to proclaim the Republic. For, I have no doubt that they naturally thought the way I do. Yet, some colleagues, who were not present in Ankara at the time, considered the proclamation of the Republic without their consent or deliberation a reason to be offended and to break their ties with us.

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.”