Erdogan pays tribute to Turkish national poet Mehmet Akif Ersoy

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday honoured the poet who penned the lyrics of the national anthem, 89 years after his passing.

"I commemorate with mercy our National Poet, Mehmet Akif Ersoy—the author of our National Anthem—who, during the days when Anatolia was under occupation, traveled from city to city calling our nation to rise up for its future, and who was a true intellectual through his stance and way of life—on the 89th anniversary of his passing," Erdogan wrote on Turkish social media platform NSosyal.

Ersoy, a Turkish-Albanian poet, was born in Ottoman-era Istanbul in 1873, in the Fatih district.

In 1921, in the wake of World War I, during Türkiye’s War of Independence against foreign occupation, Ersoy wrote the Istiklal Marsi (Independence March).

With music by Zeki Ungor, it was written to encourage the army and motivate the nation. The new republic, founded two years later in 1923, adopted the poem as its national anthem.

In addition to being a poet, Ersoy was an author, academic, and member of parliament. He passed away in 1936. He is known in Türkiye as the “national poet."