April 23, actually our most precious holiday

Americans celebrate July 4, the French celebrate July 14. The first is the American colonies' declaration of their independence from the British Empire; July 14, 1789, is the day of the French Revolution. 

We have four main national holidays, not one.

We celebrate May 19, the day Atatürk stepped on the Black Sea town Samsun at the start of the War of Independence. We celebrate April 23 because it is the inauguration of the parliament in Ankara, granting a national identity to the War of Independence; August 30 is celebrated as the anniversary of the final victory of the war and finally, October 29 is celebrated because it is the day our republic was officially declared.
 
These four dates that we celebrate are the anniversaries of exceptionally important, decisive days; however, it is as if there is hierarchy in our national holidays. It feels as though October 29 is our biggest holiday and the others are somehow "secondary." 

I don't mean to underestimate the founding of the republic or the final victory or Atatürk's Samsun journey; all of them are extremely important days for our current existence but I think if we were to celebrate one out of the four, it should be April 23.

This is because April 23 is the day that the will that won the War of Independence and later formed the republic was institutionalized and taken a parliament identity. If we did not have the national assembly, the war could not have been launched nor would we have a republic. 

Since the day he set foot in Samsun, Atatürk considered the nation itself, the nation's will, as the source of legitimacy in the national liberation fight. Exactly for this reason, he convened the Erzurum and Sivas congresses; the liberation movement in Anatolia was to...