It’s Eid today, Eid al-Adha, or the Feast of the Sacrifice. Today is the day to sacrifice, to be able to sacrifice something in your life. It is the day to question, to calculate what worldly things we can sacrifice.

It is the day to contemplate once more what really matters and what blinds us, the day to establish our position in life once more. It is the day to inspect our minds, our consciences and our hearts. It is the day to remember Abraham, who gave the toughest test of humanity, and to test how much of that burden we can endure.

We came from small villages in Anatolia. As the children of parents who had no claim other than to be good human beings, to stand on their own feet, to be Muslims, to provide for their children, to give whatever they earned with their worn hands to them, we struggled with poverty, deprivation and mostly with loneliness.

Before leaving home, we would be shielded with the prayers of mothers who were illiterate but who would wake up in the middle of the night for voluntary prayers. We remained standing on our feet thanks to the sincere supplications they offered while circumambulating the Kaaba.

Years passed. We always fought. We marched on, sometimes with excitement, sometimes with sorrow, sometimes with heartbreak and sometimes with great rage. We were never greedy, never social climbers; we always prioritized being content, loyal, and fighting shoulder-to-shoulder.

We knew that one day we would pay back everything this land, this country gave us. One day we would have to show that loyalty, make that sacrifice and be face-to-face with that test.

Years later we saw that we became one of the "richest" and accumulated the world's biggest capital; we became equipped with awareness, an identity, a patriotism, a country yearning, and an unending fighting spirit. We became capable of rising against the world.

This was not a plan: it was neither outlined nor set up. This was fate and as the travelers of that fate, we had prepared, been trained and raised for years.

If you shiver at the mention of country, of the homeland; if your eyes tear up, if you are filled with longing, if you are left sleepless at night, then you are paying your dues to these lands, to history, to yourself, and to your past and religion. If you are ready to sacrifice lives when necessary, then you are showing your loyalty to martyrs.

That is when you start to see that what you own and what you believe to be valuable becoming irrelevant. Your passions, preoccupations, hot-headedness become meaningless. You will rise like a mountain on these lands.

Do not pay attention to treachery, do not be drawn to those who have been blinded by their ambitions, by those who think the world is going to be left to them, do not pay attention to those who use Islam as a guise for their enormity and atrocity. You too have become a front of the great struggle that has been ongoing for centuries, the struggle that started again today.

This is where we wanted to get; this was where they wanted us to reach. Leaving those small villages and coming here, the paths we took, the point we reached, the identity we have were all directed at this aim.

Then, a great challenge calls us. Turkey, this country, this nation is facing one multinational attack after another and showing extraordinary resistance. Efforts are being made to get it to surrender through terrorism, civil war and economic siege. We have a great front against us, trying to take Turkey hostage, to make it kneel, and to shrink it to dust.

As the political gene of centuries took action against this front, an adamant resistance front formed. We are now putting up a Turkey resistance and fighting for the region. There is now a "Turkey axis" and there is a global "Relentless Resistance" line on this axis.

In the last millennium, we found the way to activate the entire region through Anatolia and we will do it again.

After every great chaos, we made brand new rising histories and we will do it again.

We never kneeled, never surrendered, never begged, never made history by asking for mercy, and that is how we will do it again.

We greatly changed the world's power equilibrium through these lands and we will change it again.

We always protected this "last fortress" by fighting and that is how we will protect it again.

Clench your fists, keep your fury alive, put your feet firmly on the ground and get ready. A new wave of attack is coming and the most severe period of resistance is starting for us.

We already knew this. We knew revival would not happen without a showdown. Isn't this what we were preparing for?

Then, we are ready.

I wish all friends and supporters a blessed Eid al-Adha.