Heyeti. In his sermons in the mosque, he urged for the union of the different ethnicities in the Ottoman Empire. He was dismissed from his post at the Darülfünün in Constantinople in late 1913 due to his criticism on how the Ottoman Government acted during the Balkan wars. He soon resigned from his government position and other occupations, and wrote poems and articles for the publication Sırat-ı Müstakim. During the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Mehmet Akif Ersoy was a fervent patriot. He made important contributions to the struggle for the declaration of the Turkish Republic, and advocated patriotism through speeches that he delivered in many mosques in Anatolia. On 19 November 1920, during a famous speech he gave in Kastamonu's Nasrullah Mosque, he condemned the Treaty of Sèvres, and invited the people to use their faith and guns to fight against Western colonialists. When the publication Sebilürreşat, which was then operating out of Ankara, published this speech, it spread all over the country and was even made into a pamphlet distributed to Turkish soldiers. However, Mehmet Akif Ersoy earned himself his significant place in the history of the Republic of Turkey as the composer of the lyrics of the Turkish National Anthem. During the session of 12 March 1921, the Turkish Grand National Assembly officially designated his ten-quatrain poem as the lyrics of the national anthem. Ersoy moved to Cairo in 1925 and taught the Turkish language at a university there during his 11-year stay. He caught malaria during a visit to Lebanon and returned to Turkey shortly before his death in 1936. He was interred in the Edirnekapı Martyr's Cemetery in Istanbul and was the first person in the history of the Republic of Turkey to have the national anthem performed at his funeral ceremony. Legacy Mehmet Akif Ersoy is an important national figure in the history of modern Turkey and has left an immortal trace in its history. During the republican period, Mehmet Akif Ersoy taught history and literature at various universities. Ersoy agreed to translate the Quran into the Turkish language for the Directorate of Religious Affairs, but eventually didn't deliver his version. He was worried the Kemalists would further separate Islam from the Arabic language, after they had imposed a Turkish daily prayer instead of the one in Arabic. Works Mehmet Akif Ersoy had abundant knowledge concerning traditional eastern literature. In addition, he also studied