Today is the 19th of May 2018. The 99th anniversary of Gazi Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's departure to Samsun, which lead to a nation to rise again and open the road to War of Independence. It is celebrated as Youth and Sports Day following the proposal of Atatürk, who says "I am proud of youth and trust youth", in 1938.
On the way up to establishing strong and leading Turkey, we, especially young people, have important tasks. Our Republic has passionate and enthusiastic goals for the future. We aim to Turkey to be among the top 10 economically developed countries, as of 2023. We need young people who are well trained to reach these goals that we called "Target 2023”. Besides, we have the obligation to reveal qualities that appropriate to the structure of each of our youth.
We live in a world where knowledge, science and technology are increasingly important in individual and community life. It is no coincidence that the developed societies and states of the world are the most qualified knowledge and technology producing countries, made up of qualified individuals at the same time.
As the new TÜBİTAK, we support our young people's entrepreneurial activities, their scientific pursuits, their ideals of being a scientist, their efforts towards innovation, R&D studies and projects.
We carry out various support programs for young people to develop their competencies at all levels, in addition to their regular education processes. We provide scholarships to our intelligent, hardworking and successful young people to facilitate their education. We create special scholarship programs for young people who prefer science and social sciences.
We described 19th of May as the recreation of this nation. To be a nation means to unite around common high values, to be concerned about the future and the peace of the country and, to be able to make sacrifice. Yesterday, our young people gathered around the same spirit, the same ideals and put up an epic fight. Today, they are raising our country. Similarly, they will continue to show great respect to this country.
These lands, which became homeland to us with the war of Malazgirt, once again became narrower to the enemy with the resurrection which started on May 19th. I remember with mercy and gratitude to Gazi Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, our ancestors, all our martyrs and our War of Independence veterans, who has left us these lands as our homeland; I bow in front of their cherished memories; and I congratulate our young people who are assurance of our future with their dreams, prospects, projects and all colors, on May 19 Commemoration of Atatürk, Youth and Sports Day.
Prof. Dr. Hasan MANDAL
The President of TÜBİTAK
04.06.2018