Today is an important day in Turkey.Turkey is celebrating May 19 Commemoration of Ataturk, and Youth and Sports Day.

Students carried Turkish flags during the celebration across Turkey. They also sang anthems, and chanted slogans supporting Turkey and Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the Founder of Republic of Turkey.

May 19 Commemoration of Ataturk, and Youth and Sports Day was marked in Istanbul. The Commemoration of Ataturk and Youth & Sports Day is an annual Turkish national holiday celebrated on May 19 to memorialize the start of the Turkish War of Independence.

May 19, 1919 is the day Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who would become independent Turkey’s first president, landed on the main peninsula of Turkey to begin leadership of the liberation effort. In early 1920, Ataturk convened the first Turkish Grand National Assembly in Ankara, and by 1922 all of Anatolia was freed from foreign rule. The independent Republic of Turkey was declared a year later.

During the course of his term as president, Ataturk himself proclaimed May 19 as “Youth & Sports Day”. In the aftermath of Ataturk’s monumental legacy, the day serves to honor the country’s founder.

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