A patriotic spirit embracing the Seljuk and Ottoman roots of Türkiye was ubiquitous in Malazgirt on Friday as this small town in eastern Türkiye hosted a high-profile event to mark the anniversary of the Battle of Manzikert (Malazgirt).
The celebrations were the last stage of weeklong events held in Malazgirt as well as the nearby town of Ahlat. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan joined Devlet Bahçeli, head of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and a close ally of the government, and Mustafa Destici, chair of the Great Union Party (BBP), for the event.
In Malazgirt National Park, a vast venue where dozens of yurts were set up, the celebratory events hosted a large crowd from around Türkiye who watched concerts by Ottoman military mehter bands and archery shows.
Addressing the event, President Erdoğan said the Battle of Manzikert was “the name of a time when gates of Anatolia permanently opened for Turks.”
“Our ancestors spread across Anatolia, even toward the Bosporus but had been unable to make these territories a safe place for our nation. Sultan Alparslan’s victory made Anatolia a safe homeland,” he said.
Erdoğan said the entire Islamic world was praying for the victory of Alparslan when his army confronted the Byzantine army in Malazgirt. “Sultan Alparslan prayed to Allah to grant him victory and donned a white cloth that would be his shroud if he died in the battle,” he said. “Thanks to his tactics, good intentions, sincere prayers and firm faith, the victory followed,” Erdoğan added.
The president also reminded how the sultan pardoned the captive Byzantine ruler who was killed by his own people anyway when he returned to the then-Byzantine capital Istanbul. “We always remind countries of this example when we extend a friendly hand,” he also pointed out.
“Malazgirt is not only the victory of our nation but also a victory of all Muslims,” he said, quoting a poem by a Turkish poet who likened the battle to a sacred war, adding that Malazgirt was the “mother of all victories to come.”
On Aug. 26, 1071, the Byzantine Emperor Romanos IV Diogenes' army took on the Seljuk army of mostly mounted archers, led by Sultan Alparslan, suffering a huge defeat. Romanos was taken captive, before being released by Alparslan. According to the agreement between the two leaders, a few border posts were handed over to the Seljuks. The deal allowed Sultan Alparslan to turn his full attention to the Fatimids ruling over Egypt. However, the emperor was soon afterward toppled, tortured and killed by rivals, before the empire erupted into a very destructive civil war. The agreement between the two leaders was not ratified by the new emperor, who rejected its terms. The civil war allowed nomadic Turkmen tribes following in the footsteps of the Seljuk army to flood and take over most of Anatolia, apart from a few outposts on the coast. Alparslan did not live long after the battle, dying at the hands of an assassin a year later.
The conquest of Anatolia also directly resulted in the Orthodox Christian Byzantine Empire seeking help from the Catholic Vatican. Pope Urban II used Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos's request for military aid to declare, at the Council of Clermont in 1095, a general mobilization of the Western Christendom against the Turks who had occupied Anatolia and much of the Middle East. The resulting mass invasion is called the Crusades.
The Battle of Manzikert is seen by the Turks as the beginning of the transformation of Anatolia as the land of the Turks.
The end of August is observed as Victory Week, which marks two key historical victories by Turkic forces: the Battle of Manzikert and the Great Offensive of Aug. 26, 1922, the biggest military operation of the Turkish War of Independence that saw the invading Greek army soundly defeated. The 96th Victory Day on Aug. 30 commemorates Türkiye's victory in the Battle of Dumlupınar, in the Aegean province of Kütahya, as part of the Great Offensive.
