Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on Friday accused the main opposition party of disregarding the country’s deep historical roots, saying its policies have alienated citizens from their cultural and religious heritage.
In a post on social media platform X, Erdogan criticised the Republican People’s Party (CHP), which governed Turkey during its early decades as a secular one-party state, for what he described as efforts to sever the public from the country’s Ottoman and Islamic traditions.
“During the single-party era, policies were imposed that aimed to erase our historical identity and values,” Erdogan said, referencing restrictions imposed in the early Republic, such as the closure of religious schools and a ban on the Islamic call to prayer in Arabic, which lasted from 1932 to 1950.
Erdogan, who has governed Turkey since 2003 and has positioned himself as a defender of conservative and Islamic values, often contrasts his vision of national identity with that of the secularist CHP, which was founded by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the Republic’s founder. Atatürk’s reforms aimed to modernise Turkey along Western lines, including limiting the influence of religion in public life.
The president said some segments of society still adopt a “hostile” attitude toward the Ottoman Empire and other earlier periods of Turkish history, accusing them of trying to confine national identity to the last 100 years.
“If they examined history closely, they would see that the Republic of Turkey is a fresh branch of a six-century-old imperial tree,” Erdogan said, referring to the Ottoman Empire, which ruled much of Southeast Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa before collapsing after World War I.
Erdogan warned that societies disconnected from their cultural roots cannot endure, and said Turkey’s younger generations must resist attempts to weaken their sense of identity.
“Young people will not fall into the trap of those who aim to undermine their courage, hopes, and potential,” he said.