Turkish Parliament Speaker Mustafa Şentop on Tuesday congratulated Australia on its national day.
Şentop, in a letter to Australian Senate President Slade Brockman and House of Representatives Speaker Andrew Wallace, said that Turkey places great importance on relations between the two countries.
"I hope that our relations based on friendship and cooperation between our countries will be strengthened with inter-parliamentary visits and contacts in the near future, and I hope that the 7th MIKTA Parliamentary Speakers' Meeting that we will host online in February will be successful," Şentop said, referring to the consultative-informal group that brings together the countries of Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea, Turkey and Australia.
He also wished health, peace and happiness to the people of Australia.
The MIKTA platform was launched at an inaugural meeting of the five nations' foreign ministers in September 2013 on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly. This September, the MIKTA platform celebrated its seventh anniversary.
Every Jan. 26, the nation celebrates Australia Day, the day the country was founded as a British colony in 1788.
On that date, the first governor of New South Wales arrived at Sydney Cove and raised the Union Jack.
Turkey and Australia have a special bond deeply rooted in the Çanakkale (Gallipoli) campaign of World War I, during which thousands of Australian and New Zealand (Anzac) soldiers fought and died on Ottoman soil, as did the Turkish troops they opposed.
In 1934, a message by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk – founder of the Republic of Turkey and then-army corps commander who directly fought against the Anzacs at Gallipoli – sent to Australian and New Zealander mothers said: "Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives ... you are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets where they lie side by side here in this country of ours ... You, the mothers who sent their sons from far away countries, wipe away your tears. Your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. Having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well."
