News & Comment
The Truth Behind April 23
– The Turkish National Sovereignty and Children’s Day –

News:

It is April 23 again - National Sovereignty and Children's Day in Turkey… Again, dozens of children from all over the world gathered at the Presidential Palace on the occasion of April 23 Children's Day. Again, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called for an end to the killings of children in conflict zones across the world. Again he said children should not "pay the price for wars started by adults". And “Small bodies should not pay for the adults' callousness", he said. And again the Prime Minister of Turkey – Binali Yildirim this year – made empty speeches like, “Wherever there is one of our little ones in tears across the world, we want to be the handkerchief for its tears.” (Agencies)

Comment:

Celebrating April 23 this year, only a week after the referendum, gives an even deeper importance to this “National Sovereignty and Children’s Day”. What is the April 23 National Sovereignty and Children’s Day?

April 23, 1920, is the day of the Turkish Grand National Assembly’s first gathering during Turkey’s War of Independence (1919-1923), declaring the sovereignty of Turkey. 5 years later, this day was officially announced the “Children’s Fest”. This is the day Mustafa Kemal Ataturk laid the foundations for the destruction of the Khilafah "Caliphate" – the Allah given shield to protect Muslims and the Muslim children all across the world. April 23 is the birthday of the Grand National Assembly, the representative and executive force of the republican secular democratic capitalist regime created through the hands of the Kuffar with the aim to prevent the unification of the Muslim world for good, and in fact leaving sovereignty over the Muslim lands with Turkey on the forefront to the Western power’s will. It is this Grand National Assembly that signed the Treaty of Lausanne on July 24, 1924, which ensures that the leaders of Turkey today make alliances with the criminal Russian and American forces who feast on the blood of the children of Aleppo, Idlib and Mosul.

April 23 – or National Sovereignty and Children’s Day – is the day that sowed the seeds for nationalist regimes to divide the Muslims lands, induced nationalist secular interests and even enmity and intolerance between the Muslim lands. All to be the guarantee for the secularization of the Ummah, the establishment of puppet treacherous rulers across the Muslim world, who either actively participate on the starvation, bombing and orphaning of children in Yemen, Nigeria, Congo, Somalia, and CAR or leave them to the mercy of their hangmen – the Western Kuffar powers and their institutions. It is this day that enabled the invasion of Palestine and the displacement and killing of thousands of Muslim Palestinian children. The ideas put into life on this day made the rulers of Turkey mere bystanders and even applauders during the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq.

This day is the day that empowered the regimes in our lands to hold empty, faulty and distorting talks of humanity, children’s rights and glorious future for them, while leaving them into the claws of the monstrous Kuffar forces, paving the ways for their armed forces, their planes and ships, their chemical weapons, their barrel and napalm bombs, to act with all their brutality in order to fulfill their colonialist interests.

April 23 is the most blatant expression of serving the Kuffar powers instead of the Muslims according the will of Allah the Almighty and His Messenger’s (saw) model. Our faith as Muslims says that “Sovereignty belongs to Allah (swt) and power is only to the Ummah”. However, April 23 seeks to inject lifeblood to the Islam-hostile Western powers through rhetoric of democracy and secularism and only pollute the Islamic ideas of the Ummah and thus conceal the path to revival and strength. The use of the term “Children’s Day” accompanied by a week-long eye washing celebrations and festivals do not grant the innocent children of our Ummah even the slightest chance to enjoy a single day of peace and filled stomachs.

The top of the whole farce is when the “adult” president calls on “the children” to help to create a better world and to take responsibility towards their peers across the world. This is all natural speech for the world’s most famous man who asks at every opportunity the Islam-hostile Western powers, institutions and international community for action to aid his Muslim brothers and sisters. The same Western powers, institutions and international community who wage the wars, finance and support the oppressive regimes and powers in the Muslim lands, and who are the masterminds in their oppression towards the Ummah. This is the expected speech of the Muslim world’s most powerful man, who recently declared that he was deceived by Obama over cooperation against the PKK, while expecting stronger ties with the openly Islam-hostile Trump administration.

So what is this secular democratic government celebrating?

The alienation of our children to their Islamic ideas, concepts and values, and inflicting them with the illnesses of Western societies like drug and alcohol abuse, sexual freedoms, losing family bonds and awareness towards their Ummah…??? Or is it celebrating more than 17,706 missing children in Turkey since 2015??? Almost 66,000 missing children over the last 4 years? Most of them girls between the ages 15-17. (TUIK numbers, which still lack accurate documentation)?? Does it celebrate more than 131,000 child abuse cases until 2014 (increase of 71.6 % since 2010) in Turkey alone. 4,199 child trafficking cases between 2010-2014 (ICC-International Children’s Center). Maybe it celebrates more than 140 million orphaned children across the world with the majority of them in or from Muslim lands like Afghanistan, Syria, Palestine, Myanmar etc. (UNICEF)??? Is this regime celebrating millions of Muslim children displaced, haunted, or locked up in refugee camps??

It is time that this Ummah sees the deception behind these non-Islamic fests and celebrations, and becomes aware of the emptiness of the Muslim leaders’ speeches. There is no other way for our children to sincere protection and dignified save lives other than under the shield of the Khilafah "Caliphate" Rashidah upon the Method of Prophethood.

The day where this Ummah celebrates true fests under safety, and where children across the world – Muslim and non-Muslim – gain true smiles on their faces and enjoy true happiness and childhood is very soon bi’thnillah. Because the pious leader of the Khilafah "Caliphate" Rashidah (Caliphate) will not unload responsibility for the protection of Muslim children to international community and in particular not the vulnerable children. This leader will not hold empty speeches of whipping out children’s tears, but will utilize its army to clean their lands from their enemies. This leader will not wait for a perfect time to help the Ummah… He will make the time perfect through taking solid actions against the enemies of Islam.

Oh Allah grant our children the day of joy and liberty through this pious leader very soon!

Written for the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir
Zehra Malik