“Lord, do not write a national anthem for this people again”;

This is the only wish of Mehmet Akif Ersoy, the poet of Turkish independence or the poet of Islam, as he likes to call Arab writers.

On March 12, 2021, the adoption of the national anthem of Turkey was approved in Parliament, followed by a celebration of its 100th anniversary.

This date is celebrated annually, as the Turkish anthem is more than just the anthem of all Turks.

The independence anthem expressed the will of the people who gathered to fight for the future of Turkey, and all the experiences they went through and the feelings they had in that dangerous period, and Mehmet Akif Ersoy excelled in translating those feelings.

In fact, what he did goes beyond translation, as through his poetry he created sensations and opened new horizons.

It was officially announced that 2021 will be the year in which the poet Mehmet Akif Ersoy and his independence anthem will be celebrated.

The importance of this anthem is due to the difficult circumstances that Turkey was going through when it was composed and adopted, in addition to the rhetoric and aesthetics demonstrated by the Islamic thinker Muhammad Akif Ersoy in these verses.

This anthem, which is being chanted today in an atmosphere of stability and security, was raised for the first time before the Turkish Parliament during the war of independence, and at that time all listeners agreed that this work is the best ever in terms of words, beauty and poetic quality.

After only one reading, the listeners would repeat it and memorize it from each other, despite the participation of a large number of works in the national anthem selection competition.

At that time, the independence anthem was expressing the will of the people who gathered to struggle for the future of Turkey, and all the experiences they went through and the feelings they had in that dangerous period, and Mehmet Akif Ersoy excelled in translating those feelings.

In fact, what he did goes beyond translation, as through his poetry he created sensations and opened new horizons.

The verses written by Muhammad Akif Ersoy are long talked about from the poetic, artistic and philosophical aspects, but the greatest witness to the greatness of this poet and thinker;

It is the people who were personally affected by this anthem and who felt that it touched them directly and expressed their lives.

The writer believes that the Turkish national anthem is not just poetic verses, and the Qur’anic verse that says, “And the poets are followed by seducers, have you not seen that they wander in every valley and that they say what they do not do?” It is not just a work of art with an aesthetic dimension only that does not mean anything to life People.

This poem, consisting of 10 syllables, bears a great lesson for this nation that inhabited this land a thousand years ago, and spread peace, security and justice, then it is time to fight for life and for the future.

During that difficult period in which the enemies were attacking Turkey, and Istanbul, Izmir, Sakarya and Opium were under occupation, and all the efforts of the enemies were aimed at destroying the Turkish nation, this anthem came to begin with the phrase “Do not be afraid”, as it was stated at the beginning of this poem:

Fear not, the red banner will not die out in the twilight of the sky

Before the flame of light goes out in the last house on my homeland

It is a planet that will remain shining, for it is the glue of my nation

It is mine and my people without end

The poet chose these words because the situation was causing many fears in the soul, as the Greek forces were continuing their advance on the front of the city of Bursa, and there were no indications of the departure of the invaders, whether that was soon or after the end of the British occupation of Istanbul.

85 years after his death, the poet Ersoy is still a living intellectual and literary symbol in the Islamic world, in which he moved between Ottoman Turkey, the Republic, the Balkans, Syria and Egypt, where he lived for more than 10 years, in addition to Lebanon and the Arabian Peninsula.

Ersoy was born in Istanbul in 1873, to a father who came from a village in western Kosovo to study, and his name began to rise strongly in the literary and academic arenas, especially after joining in 1908 to Istanbul University as a professor of Ottoman literature, and his participation in the publication of the magazine "The Straight Path" in which he published most of the The poems of his first book "Pages" published in 1911.

The young man, Muhammad Akef, showed interest in the books of Sheikh Muhammad Abdo, for whom he translated “Islam between Science and Civilization” (1901), in response to the then French Foreign Minister Gabriel Hannotto, who returned the causes of Muslims’ delay to Islam itself, and also translated into Turkish the book “embracing Islam.”

With the beginning of the War of Independence led by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk; Muhammad Akef resigned from his government job, and joined the battle as a preacher and a wandering poet who provokes the enthusiasm of the Turks to participate in the defense of their homeland against the British, French and Greek occupation, and in this context, the town of Burdur (southwest of Turkey) elected him to represent it in the “Grand National Council”, which opened in Ankara in April April 1920.

Ersoy became one of the most famous figures in Turkish literature in the early 20th century, and his poems dealt with social problems and philosophical, religious, political and moral issues. It came in 7 collections of poetry, and his poetic talents emerged during the First World War, and inflamed the feelings of the Turks with poems in which he called for Islamic unity, including the poem “The Stages” (1911), “A Lecture in Sulaymaniyah” (1912) and “Voices of Truth” (1913) and "Lecture on the Conqueror" (1914), "Memoirs" (1917), "Asim" (1924) and "Shadows" (1933).

In the gloomy atmosphere, Mehmet Akif Ersoy succeeded in drawing a bright picture about the future, a picture that is getting more and more beautiful day by day.

Unfortunately, after that, the values ​​around which people gathered, expressed by the national anthem, were overturned, the use of Arabic letters in which the anthem was first written was prohibited, and an environment was created in which people like Akef found themselves suffering from exclusion, persecution, and liquidation.

Under these circumstances, this poet was forced to leave for Egypt, and entered into a state of grief and death-like silence, long before his actual death.

For the people, this anthem reflects the irresistible personal and poetic strength of Akef, which has preserved the importance of the national anthem.

On February 28, 1997, those who fought against the values, beliefs and future of the Turkish nation tried to open a new front against the independence anthem, and sought to replace it with another anthem on the tenth anniversary of its status, but their attempts failed.