Turkish ambassador’s speech during the Republic of Turkey’s 91st Anniversary

The Proclamation of the Republic of Turkey is an important milestone in Turkish history as it marks the end of an Empire and signals the beginning of the newly born Republic after four years of struggle for independence.

Our leader in the Turkish War of Independence, the founder of the Republic, and its first President, the Great Atatürk, will be remembered by all Turks till eternity.

One of the greatest leaders of our era, Atatürk brought Turkey independence, made many revolutionary reforms in the social, cultural, educational, economic, judicial and political areas, which completely changed the destiny of Turkey and created a liberal and secular democracy. He ensured that Turkey got its rightful place among the most advanced nations of today.

Thus the country, which Turkey has become today, is by no doubt Atatürk’s legacy. It is indeed a delight for us to be together with our friends this evening to celebrate this achievement.

Turkey, as an Afro-Eurasian country has highlighted African nations and Turkey’s African Partnership Policy as one of the most important priorities of Turkish Foreign Policy in the 21st Century. In line with this policy, Turkey attributes utmost importance to developing our friendship and partnership with our brother and friend Uganda.

Turkey sees Uganda as one of the most important and strongly respected countries in the continent. It is an island of stability in a highly volatile region, the engine of Africa and especially of the EAC integration; shortly it is a beacon of success.

It is also our belief that without unity, integration, solidarity and cooperation among Africans and pan-Africanism, the economic and democratic emergence of Africa wouldn’t be complete; Africa has to have confidence in itself alone and in its African brothers and has never to over-rely on external advice or assistance.

All the roads to economic development have already been tested. Therefore, neither Uganda nor any other African country is dependent on the outside world for attaining knowledge about this.

Only profound belief in achieving the goal of industrialisation, coupled with a hardworking and educated population and good governance are the keys.

Uganda is blessed with abundant natural resources, strong population and a very patriotic and devoted leader, who tires himself endlessly to find the right methods to reach the goal of industrialisation, economic development and prosperity for his people.

Uganda’s leadership has spearheaded achievement of many of these goals such as eradicating extreme poverty, universal primary education, and gender equality, reduction of child mortality, combating diseases, high economic growth, modernisation and creation of a vibrant media, among others.

These facts clearly guarantee your country the chance ahead of others to achieve development to first country status.

I would like to commend the leadership of Uganda for the tremendous efforts to date, to develop the democracy in Uganda; it has become a model in its region in many respects such as in the achievement of stability, peace and economic growth, as well as in representing the country on the international arena as an influential actor in diplomacy and mediation, and a wise brother to look up to for countries in the region.

No country on the globe could be considered as being perfect; each one has its own peculiarities, historical, cultural and political traditions, which cannot be criticised all the time for not resembling other countries’ own traditions.

Although Turkey and Uganda have established embassies in each other’s countries only in 2010 and 2011 respectively, we have come a long way in building slowly but strongly our relationship.

Turkish investments such as Turkish Airlines, Turkish NGOs and contracting companies such as KOLİN are already resident in your country, contributing to the development of the economy through their first class work. We are proud that they have gained the confidence of the Ugandan Government.

Ever since Turkish Airlines started their flights the volume and exchange of people and goods has certainly increased.

Many more world class Turkish contracting companies are eager to come to Uganda, and based on mutual advantage to build state-of-the-art infrastructure such as exist in Turkey. They would like to build roads, railways, airports, dams, pipelines, refineries, hotels and tourism facilities and develop mines as well as the oil industry.