İbrahim Kalın, President of the National Intelligence Organization (MİT), emphasized the importance of staying connected to Turkey’s roots while engaging with the global community. In a recent statement, Kalın underscored that Turkey’s focus on being indigenous and national is one of the most significant steps taken in recent years to ensure the country stands on its own feet.
“We must persistently emphasize that while opening to the world, we should never detach from our own roots,” Kalın said. “Just as being indigenous and national does not mean closing ourselves off to the world, opening to the world does not mean abandoning our essence, our roots, our sources. The emphasis on being indigenous and national is one of the most important steps Turkey has taken in recent years to stand on its own feet. Because for years, we were told in various ways and forms that we could only find a place in the modern world by distancing ourselves from our history, our essence, our sources. Under the guise of modernization, superficial Westernization projects, top-down initiatives without sociological grounding, were imposed on the geography and peoples of Anatolia, but each time we faced major flaws and significant troubles. Our intellectuals became alienated from their society, our people became alienated from their history, and this alienation was experienced in very different ways by both the Turkish right and the Turkish left. We continue to experience the residues and traces of this alienation to this day. By being and remaining indigenous and national, that is, by firmly planting our feet in a solid geography in the world and reaching out to the world, by shaping our vision accordingly, this is one of the fundamental principles of our intellectual perspective. Only with such a vision can we have something to say to the world when we open up and reach out to it. Otherwise, we would only be a mirror of others. We cannot go beyond being a repetition of others.”
