President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Wednesday hosted a group of veterans and the families of fallen soldiers for a ceremony to bestow the State Medal of Pride. Twenty-six people were presented medals, some posthumously, at the ceremony in Çankaya, the former Turkish presidential residence in the capital Ankara. Across Turkey, ceremonies were held by local governorates to distribute 350 medals.

The medal is second highest civilian honor and is usually bestowed to veterans who have been severely injured in counterterrorism operations or soldiers, police officers and others killed in action or terror attacks.

Terrorism has plagued Turkey for years, with the country having faced continuous terror attacks by the PKK and numerous other smaller groups with similar and different ideologies. After the Syrian war broke, bringing with it the emergence of Daesh, the country was more exposed to terror attacks. Since 2017, no major terror attack has occurred in the country thanks to the extensive counterterrorism operations both within the country’s borders and abroad in northern Iraq and Syria, where PKK members are holed up.

"We are not allowing the barons of terrorism in Iraq and Syria to act freely with our domestically developed unmanned aerial vehicles which reshape (warfare)," Erdoğan said in his speech at the ceremony. "We make them pay for every innocent life they claimed, every moment of pain our nation had suffered, every drop of blood an innocent person lost," Erdoğan said.

The president praised the work of veterans and fallen soldiers. "We know very well that we cannot pay their dues whatever we do. Undoubtedly, it is with Allah’s will and sacrifice of our martyrs and veterans that our flag is still flying high and we are a free country today," he said.