Among others, the Turkish president said the current year, 2021, will be celebrated for its “…significant anniversaries of our civilization.”
He pointed to the centennial of the composition of the country’s national anthem, along with what he called the mosques, madrassas, libraries, fountains and bridges built “…by our ancestors, who gave Anatolia a new identity”.
He was referring to Asia Minor, which for millennia hosted some of the greatest and most influential civilizations of the Near East, before being included in the Hellenic world, the Roman Empire and its successor, the Eastern Roman Empire, known today as Byzantium.
Some veteran Erdogan watchers pointed to a concerted effort by the Islamist Turkish regime to sway and deflect public opinion in that country from the international attention focused on the bicentennial of the commencement of the Greek War of Independence.
The titanic struggle that began in 1821 culminated in the liberation of southern Greece and a portion of the Aegean isles in 1829 after four centuries of dour and anachronistic Ottoman rule.