We are the children of all climates.

Anatolia is where these climates and identities amalgamate.

It is where the fate of everybody who lives in our region intersects somehow.

It is where their past, present, cultures, political fate, mercy, compassion, grief, happiness, anger and protests find common ground.

There is no region we will not reach, that we cannot touch, and with which we cannot establish a sincere connection of the heart.

There is no parcel of land on this earth that we have not set foot upon, left our fingerprint on, or made memories in.

If we collapse, the region will collapse. If we rise, the region will rise. If we laugh, they too will be happy, and if we are in mourning, they will be devastated.

This is the history of the last millennium. This is, once again, the struggle of today’s Turkey. This is the reason behind the problems we are encountering today, the fight we are putting up, the reason why a massive front is being built against us again a century later, and why we are retaliating with a confrontation.

This is not a political preference, it is fate, it is a political heritage. It is the responsibility to build history and region. Anatolia is the homeland of this mission.

This is the reason behind the path we are taking today, the moves we are making, the decisions we are taking. This is why we are not stepping back despite the storms domestically and abroad, the plots being planned and the mass perception operations.

We think accordingly when building mosques; we keep this in mind when building a university; this is how we shape our children’s minds when they start primary education.

We feel the grief of the greater region internally. We push our means to the limit and run to their aid. Our coffee still “comes from Yemen”; Damascus is our city; Sarajevo is Istanbul; Skopje is Üsküdar. Crossing from Baku to Kazan is like crossing from Fatih (a district on Istanbul’s European side) to Üsküdar (a district on Istanbul’s Asian side) for us.

We contemplate Mecca and Medina’s future with concern, and we are furious with those who distanced Basra from us. We still feel the same heartbreak we felt when wailing for Yemen a century ago as Baghdad burns a century later. We consider Jerusalem’s existence as our own.

These are the cities of our region and are stronger than states. This is what we believe and we know that they will return to the present, the history of the future and get us to merge once again.

This is a discourse of the heart, a common political language, the most effective power of this age.

We feel the grief, the happiness and joys from the Taurus mountains to the testy winds of the Black Sea, from the centuries-old memory of the Balkans to the resistance of the Caucasians, from the deserts of Africa to the steppes of Central Asia, from the Himalayas to the rain forests of Far Asia with the same emotions.

Our anger, reactions and concerns are one and the same. We speak a common political language as we speak a language of the heart. We produce answers with respect to developments concerning ourselves, our countries and the world in the same language and with the same thoughts.

This common language is the most effective political power. It is hence this discourse that faces the heaviest attacks. Because this language is both a stance and our super power.

This is also the reason behind the attacks on the heart of our region, as well as the reason behind the infighting theories in each of our countries. It is the concern others feel towards this power.

Our interventions on the north of Syria are beyond just fighting terrorism. It is an intervention on the reshaping of the region and drawing its map. It is not only for us but for the future of the region. It is a matter of standing against a foreign invasion, a Western occupation.

Turkey’s “Operation Claw” in the north of Iraq is beyond fighting the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) alone. It is an intervention targeting the invasion plans of foreign countries, from the Iranian border to the Mediterranean.

These are each geopolitical moves; they are touches that will manifest themselves in the history of the future. There will be more challenging showdowns and they will all be overcome.

This is the support our people, whose hearts are as vast as our region, give to this operation. It is a sense of the future that is as deep as recalling our historical memory to the present; it is an insight that gives strength to empires.

This unshakable faith and character is much deeper than the most superior political plan in today’s world.

Those offering Eid prayers on the Kato mountains and those fighting the multinational forces in Syria and Iraq are the people of that great fight. Their fight is the same cause and same prayers as those who are with the oppressed all the way in the depths of Africa, Sri Lanka, on the Pacific coasts.

We have never been a nation that begs. We also never tried to sustain our presence under the shadow of others. While almost every country in our region summoned Western troops to our region for their own future, we are a nation that runs the risk of standing alone against them and their masters. This is the strength and will that has carried us from East Asia to the Atlantic coasts.

This country is mercy, it is compassion, sharing; it has a will of steel, and a fighting spirit that knows no end.

Because we are the common country of all nations.

Because we celebrate even our Eid holidays from East Turkestan to the Atlantic coasts, from the Balkans to the depths of Africa with those whom we consider as “brothers.”

Therefore, regardless of the storms they start within, regardless of the fronts they build abroad, and regardless of how hard they try to siege Turkey, this historical rise of the 21st century cannot and will not be stopped.

Happy Eid.