Guide to Turkish Nationalism

History of Turkey is interesting because transitioning from a failing imperialist power to an imperialist puppet and becoming a secondary-capitalist power you can easily observe the conditions which ideologies develops. While this text is no means an extensive history of nationalist movements and nearly all of the historical information can be easily found in Wikipedia, an analysis of nationalism using Turkish history can be helpful to understand nationalism from a socialist perspective, have a base knowledge 20th century Turkish history(It's more than Turkish curriculum teaches) or at the very least can see where I coming from when I talk about nationalism.

1. The Birth of Turkish Nationalism(1880s-1920s): "Economic Anxiety" Strikes

The late 19th century was not easy for Ottoman Empire. Nationalist movements in Balkans become a huge problem for the state. Several solutions have been offered for the problem of keeping the empire together.
Westernism: The idea that Ottomans should adapt Western ideas, customs and technology. This is not a real ideology but a thought that influenced other ideologies at varying levels.
Ottomanism: Similar to old Roman and to a lesser extent "American" identity, the idea is to create a single identity for everyone in the empire regardless of religion and ethnicity. This idea was popular initially because had it allowed to preserve most amount of land in empire. Two edicts(Edict of Gülhane 1839 and Imperial Reform Edict of 1856) and later the Constitution of 1876 has been passed  for this. They gave more rights to minorities and later allowed them to have representation in newly opened Parliament. However Ottoman Empire was several hundred years late to establish such an identity as from its conception treating different groups differently was a major policy of Ottomans, so no one really believed the changes was genuine anyway, nationalism train was loud and unstoppable, thus this ideology was utterly failed.
Pan-Islamism: After it has been clear that Christian minorities would not stay loyal to the Empire, the attention was geared towards keeping Muslim minorities under control. This ideology was promoted by Abdul Hamid II during his 33 years long resign. The emphasis was made on Ottoman Caliphate. A variation of this idea was common among intellectuals was a single state of all Muslims under the superior Turkish race, similar to pan-Asianism of the Japan but this wasn't openly spoken because emphasis of race contradicts the idea of Muslim brotherhood thus not favored by conservatives, including the Sultan himself. The ideology saw some success as Muslim minorities indeed stayed loyal until World War but segregationist movements spread throughout Middle East afterwards. After the new republic was born, Islamism was actively fought against to promote secularism. Nevertheless it survived as a political thought afterwards, often merged with Turkish nationalism. Today, it is promoted by Caliphate lovers, neo-Otttomanists and adherents of more Islamic part of Turk-Islam thought. They are most famous by worshipping Ottoman imagery and being salty about abolishment of caliphate.
Pan-Turanism: Of course it was about time a classic-type nationalism became popular among Ottoman intellectuals..The loss at First Balkan Wars increased nationalist and racist sentiment [2]which made an idea popular especially among a group of intellectuals called Young Turks, that is distinct from pan-Islamism
In the 19th century Turan became a word for describing Central Asia in the West and later a language family called Turanian was proposed: the family consisted of Uralic, Altaic, Korean, Japanese and Dravidian languages. Then some racist scholars defined Turanids to distinct nomadic civilizations from urbanized ones. The word become popular in Turkey after it became the name a poem by Ziya Gökalp, a famous nationalist author, in which these words were written: "The land of the Turks is not Turkey, nor yet Turkestan. Their country is the eternal land: Turan"

[The Ideal of Pan Turanists (It would include Ottoman lands too though)]
Following the end of the reign of Abdul Hamid II, after a short period of relative democracy, Young Turks now known as Party of Union and Progress took over a country with a coup in 1913 and set up a pan-Turanist regime. Let's examine the main ideas and plans of the party and how they relate to nationalism:

• They wanted to create a Turkish nation and national identity, distinct from the Muslim identity of Turkish folk. Nation is an economic union of the political majority ethnicity in the country and establishment and empowerment of a national bourgeoise. That meant taking away the economic power of Christian minorities who hold the most manufacturing jobs and the capital at the time [1] which resulted it Greek genocides of 1914 and Armenian and Assyrian genocides of 1915. National identity is building loyalty to nation-state by manipulating sentiments like gratefulness, belonging and a person can feel towards place, culture and people so workers from the favored ethnicity will uphold the national bourgeoise's interests. The unfavored etnicity on the other hand must be economically crushed, their identity must be replaced with the "correct" one or they have to be removed physically. This is the crux of all nationalism, it is inherently capitalist and will always in end up genocides and assimilations. As such an ideology such as "nationalist socialism" would either be a meme, fascist entryism or political illiteracy.
• While they advocated for mild liberal reforms in the beginning, they abandoned democracy as soon as they took power. They envisioned a monarchy with a heavy military rule, influenced by Prussia and Japan. Nationalists have often resisted democracy in favor of tradition but the veil of democracy prove itself a useful tool to pacifying people. Even when nationalists seem in favor of democracy and civil rights it will only last until they utter the magic words: "National security." As we see with Young Turks of old and grumpy Americans of today,  they know how to co-opt the language of freedom but you don't have to dig too much to find their souls sacrified to "national interests"
• They envisioned to Ottoman Empire to rule in Central Asia, Turan lands where Turkic/Altaic people of all stripes could live under one banner. Alongside taking back the lost lands of Ottomans, this. was the other main motivation that led the empire to join WWI. Nationalism has a manifest destiny and will be never content with current lands of the state, even after it achieves the goal of ruling over it's supposed lands it can just expand it's mythology as economic interests arises. Manifest destiny usually  as ideals of"Greater X" and "taking back rightful lands" in countries struck by imperialism and colonialism in countries that can be imperialists themselves.
• They weren't strictly ethno-nationalist however. Young Turks were Pan-Islamists themselves for a long time but even after quitting Islamism they were tolerant towards Muslim minorities. Most Pan-Turkists saw Turks in the "Turk-Islam cultural sphere" and envisioned an Ottoman Empire like I stated in the Islamism section, rather than one with distinctly ethnic, racial or cultural unity based upon a language tree. Turk-Islam type of Pan-Turanism is still the most popular one today.
• This is not to say they didn't care about race, they accepted European racial models at the time, but they saw the Yellow Race as Golden Race, which they saw Turks as a part of it, and believed in Eastern Supremacy. They saw the colonization of Asian civilizations lile India, China etc. as a misfortune of history and intended to achieve the victory over Western civilization. All nationalists implicitly or explicitly value the racial identity to varying degrees, the only difference is whether they prioritize cultural or biological anthropological categories. When someone believes in immutable characteristics of certain social constructs when classifying people, it's not a great logical leap for them to believe in others. It is only after defeat of Nazis made racism ugly, nationalists made efforts to distance themselves from open racists.
• They admired the Japanese modernization because Japanese were able to adopt Western technology while preserving "Japanese spirit". They wanted to model Ottoman westernization in the same vein and making it a world power again. As Ottomans completely got decimated and the new Republic of Turkey stayed backwards and still not yet caught up to Western standards in a lot of ways, modernization and the utopian idea of "taking tech while preserving culture" is still a great issue in Turkish nationalism as  "making Turkey great" remains an eternal butthurt among nationalists. Even the current gov. today convinced a lot of people to Turkey is in a great progress, the insecurity about Turkishness is common in the population. In a failing country, or for people failed by a strong country  nationalism will inevitably bring insecurity. This is why believing in an idealized version of history , denial of genocides and oppression is tantamount of nationalism. Insecurity neutralizes national pride and to restore it nationalism will use national myths, outsider enemies and threats or simply create them in public mind if such doesn't exist.
• They emphasized and exaggerated the martial abilities of Turks, saying "Sword of the Turk have exalted Arabs and Persians." and claimed the heritage of conquerors such as Attila, Genghis Khan Timur,Mehmet II etc. [3] They saw Turks as a warrior nation and put great importance training the Turkish youth with military discipline. They saw rule of the military as "fitting the character of Turks " and efficient as the party members greatly admired Prussia and Germany. They saw Turkish men as warriors and Turkish women as the breeders of warriors.  It's no merely chance that nationalist regimes are always militaristic. Fetishizing war, martyrdom and miliary culture is integral to nationalism.  Military discipline is one of the easiest ways to make people loyal to abstract collective and therefore bourgeoise. Manifest destiny, militarism and need for enemy is why nationalism cannot be peaceful.
• Were they fascist? In a lot ways they fit, repressive to the core, nationalist, militarists etc. and if someone embraces these stances today they deserve same treatment as fascists and they could be safely called one in daily talk. however when talking about pre-Mussolini nationalist regimes I don't think it's accurate to call it fascist, not only because it would be anachronistic but fascism is directly born from saving capitalism from people and desperation this breeds makes it carry unbelievably utopian aims and simplistic view of the world. Of course the similarities between fascism and nationalism-classic isn't a coincidence, while how plausible it may look fascism wasn't envisioned by a single man while he was at toilet, many of its ideas directly come from the original nationalistic military state Prussia and even to a lesser extent from British and French empires. You can easily see the difference bet ween the two by comparing the pre-WW1 Germany and the Nazi Germany. Nationalism of the old Reich intended to elevate Germany to be the first in the race of imperialism. Nationalism of the new Reich however was much more desperate, bourgeoise was losing the grip of the worker so it had to make Germany great again fast and simply colonizing the world didn't make a country great enough for the people to sacrifice their souls anymore so they had to sell much higher dreams and present a world so clear and doubtless that was enough to suppress the alienation of the fellow Aryan. No wonder then today nationalism looks so indistinguishable from fascism: Nationalism already achieved its goal of establishing a bourgeoise class in even most colonized parts of the world. National bourgoise is simply a thing of the past in the era of multi-continental mega companies. Capitalism is more devastating than ever and old meager goals of nationalism simply attracts no-one. That's why today Nationalists either yearn for a return to a golden mythical era of "small business and tradition" or completely embrace fascism without admitting it.

With enormous butthurt, grand ambitions and much pat in the back from Germans, Ottomans entered the WWI and ended up with crushed dreams and even more butthurt. Freedom and the Progress Party has been disbanded. Some of them joined the independence and later took positions in state in the new Turkish Republic. Some got imprisoned or got exiled to various countries. Some joined Enver Pasha, the leader of the Party, one of the main guys behind the Armenian Genocide, went to fight alongside anti-communists in Turkic countries. They were either killed by Red Army or perished in the steppe cold. A moment of silence for #VictimsofCommunism.

2. Nationalism of The New Republic (1920s-1950s): National Liberation Turns Oppressive

Kemalists and nationalists always point at the Independence War and masturbate while saying "It is nationalism that brings everyone under one banner and defeats the imperialism. Nationalism is what holds nations free!" Nationalists have been certainly successful in this propaganda so much that even too many socialists today believe in this, but Turkish Independence War makes this claim very shaky.
At the end of WWI,  Ottomans lost everything except Anatolia and Eastern Thrace, although there were rebellious bands and organizations working for independence, government and a large part of society sans Southeast Anatolia (today also called North Kurdistan) felt utterly devastated and were ready to accept peace, even at the cost of accepting imperialist rule. This sentiment only changed after Greek occupation of İzmir, because it was abundantly clear that Greeks was here to actually own the land for their own state, not establish a protectorate. When French entered Kurdistan and Greeks entered Izmir, Muslim population felt their lands, their people, their religion, their way of life and their identity threatened and once more patriotic sentiment increased. While this sentiment was indeed used by the new government in Ankara to create a national identity, it wasn't nationalism, Islamism or really a coherent ideology. What the government achieved was creating a disciplined army against the Allied forces and making their struggle legitimate at international area. Turks, Kurds, Laz people [4], Zaza people [5], Circassians, Romanis from every background and ideology was successfully united for liberation.
But was it "national liberation"? The government in Istanbul and the bourgeoise was for the most part sold their souls long time ago. Even at the heat of patriotism, they were still more than a few people who were ready to accept imperial rule, who deserted the army, were apathetic towards the whole thing and some even advocated for an American protectorate. Some fought against imperialists as guerilla forces, but were too proud or ambitious to accept a central rule.  Kurdish and Zaza people pushed back French out of North Kurdistan almost wholly themselves, supported the new government which oppressed them even harder than Westerners did when the new Republic was established. Other ethnic minorities too fought to protect their identities only to force to lose them. Turkish peasants and workers liberated themselves successfully, only to chained by a state that would use their labor for free to establish a new bourgoise class, repressed them culturally, ruled over everyone like the old Turanist regime and became part of the imperialist machine in just two decades. It wasn't certainly liberation for non-Muslims. What was left of Greek population soon got the boot for the most part. Armenian hopes of returning to the lands that was stolen from them was crushed. Non-Muslims were used as political pawns and foot soldiers of imperialism then discarded when they were of no use and what remaining of them that lived in Anatolia had got almost completely assimilated. So the answer of our question: Yes. The only thing that was truly liberated was the new national identity that was enforced upon peoples of Anatolia. It was indeed a national liberation, in the most literal sense of the word, liberation of the new mythical "Turk".
Despite all, it was a hopeful day in 29 October 1923. A new republic was officially declared, the surest sign that Anatolia bows to no enemy! A republic that was gained by efforts of all people in Anatolia was surely going to be named after something that represents everyone, with mistakes learned during the Ottoman Empire a country that belongs to all could be built, right? Nope, the name was going to be "Türkiye Cumhuriyeti" [6] This name choice was merely the harbinger of a disaster that soon struck the whole country:
Kemalist/Atatürkist Nationalism: Leader of the new republic and MLG general Mustafa Kemal Atatürk didn't wrote a book for his political theory but his party program and the principles that the reforms in the Republic was based on creates an ideology that is called Atatürkism/Kemalism. [7] While nationalism is only one principle of Kemalism, the other five principles are all at least partially influenced by and influenced Kemalist nationalism
Republicanism: In his young days, Mustafa Kemal was in the Freedom of Progress Party. He agreed with them on a lot of things but quit on some issues. One of them was the Party's endorsement of constitutional monarchy. He on the other hand wanted a republic. As a model he looked at France. A constitutional unitary republic and a regular bourgeoise democracy. The second issue was involvement of military in politics. He wanted military completely out of administration. This was a real pet peeve of him, even in war times he didn't allow military officers in the parliament (he himself left military to join it). After the republic has been founded, unlike most dictators of his time, he never appeared with military uniform in the public.  Military personnel were banned from any kind of political activity, even voting. I suspect the division and strife in the military in First Balkan Wars between conservatives and Westernists made him hold such a radical opinion about this. Unfortunately his nationalism made his mildly anti-militarist position moot, neither a lot of people in his circle nor Kemalists after him cared about this issue, they still today happily endorse coups and elite military rule, ironically for "upholding Atatürk's principles". Even more ironically, bourgeoise democracy was going truly to be set up by people Kemalists directly opposed throughout history. This tells us something: Nationalism is flexible and nation states can manifest various ways. It can be monarchy, republic, direct military rule, indirect military rule, a single-person rule, a representative democracy. As long as bourgeoise remains in power and democracy stays as an illusion all is cool for nationalism.
Secularism: It is an aggressive type of secularism. It doesn't advocate for government non-involvement in religion, as seen in British or US secularism, but for  total government control in religion similar to French secularism. Many reforms are at least partially motivated by making religion irrelevant not only in government and law, but in social life and culture as well. The most defining aspect of this secularism is that it is directly shaped by nationalism in its implementation. This perhaps can be best seen with population exchange between Greece and Turkey.  Shortly after peace, Greece and Turkey agreed on swapping most of the Greek and Turkish population between them. In practice however, it was Muslim and Christian population who was exchanged. On Greece's part it made perfectly sense. It was a Christian Monarchy so of course getting rid of Muslims was a priority for them. For Turkey's part, the gov. was perfectly aware that the population's identity was shaped by religion foremost. Here is the thing though: Turkey actively pursued religious unity alongside with aggressive secularism with closing down Christian schools, handling all control of religious organizations to the state, erasure of Alawites[8] all serving to establish Sunni Islam as the dominant religion. This had many benefits for creating the new Turkish identity. It smoothed the transition between Turk-Islam identity and Kemalist Turkishness. It made easier to control religions role in society when everyone held same customs. State didn't need to promote atheism, it could pose as promoting freedom of religion and even use religious sentiments for their benefit had necessity arrived. Of course this wasn't unique to the Republic of Turkey. While nation and religion may look like unrelated today, religion remains as an important question in nationalism. This is why major splits in nationalism happens fundamentally over religion, while nationalism puts forth ethnic identity over religion, religion plays a major part in building national identity. Nationalists can pretend they support freedom of religion but almost every nationalist thinks their own religious beliefs are naturally best for the people!
Revolutionism: Atatürk was inspired by French revolution and believed in fast transition of society and called his reforms as "revolution".[9] Nearly all reforms of Atatürk were partially made for creating a new national identity, but this identity was different from what Pan-Turanists envisioned. Atatürk was a pragmatist and he saw Turanism as a pipe-dream, he thought the future of the Turks was with nation-state in Anatolia. This nation would be Turkey, the state of the Turkish nation. The official propaganda of Turkey make you try to believe "Turkish" isn't related to ethnicity but simply denotes everyone who lives in Turkey. This is a big fat lie of course, the goal of Turkey was always assimilation and for this goal all minorities in Turkey were denied of their history, identity and language.[10]There was another problem however: Anatolian Turkishness was even more vague than "Turanid" identity, mixed with history and culture of every ethnicity in Anatolia. and much more imbued in religion. This made necessary the creation of a new national culture. The nation-state assimilated Turks into the new Turk they desired. For this purpose, the state went out to destroy all Ottoman customs to connections to all Ottoman history, even if doing so had no material benefits and sometimes ended up damaging the Turkish culture.[11] Turkey was actually trying to out-West the Western countries, hence th new identity of the Turk has been tailored: Pure-Turkish[12] speaking, civilized and cultured(according to Western ideals), dresses with European clothes and a fedora[13], secular, science-loving, rational, physically fit, patriotic and Aryan[14]. But even creating a nation out of "New-Atheist Rational Skeptics" the before the concept even existed wasn't enough. Oh yea baby, it's time for THE SUN LANGUAGE THEORY. According to this theory, uhhh, read for yourself.

"The theory claims that the Sumerians, being Turks, originating in Central Asia, all languages also consequently originated there and first used by the Turks. The first language, in fact, came into being in this way: Prehistoric man, i.e., Turks in the most primitive stage, was so struck by the effects of the sun on life that he made of it a deity whence sprang all good and evil. Thence came to him light, darkness, warmth and fire, with it were associated all ideas of time: height, distance, movement, size, and give expression to his feelings. The sun was thus the first thing to which a name was given. It was "ag" (pronounced agh), and from this syllable all words in use today are derived. This, briefly, is the theory about the "sun language," and with the new conception of Turkish history it will be taught in the new Angora school." 1936 New York Times article on The School of Language in Turkey

This was really taken seriously and was heavily endorsed and financially backed by Atatürk himself too. After the flop of Pure-Turkish thing (read [12]), he was really upset about loan words staying in Turkish, but with this theory he worried no more. Since Turkish is the first ever language, literally every word is Turkish! All you need to do find an old word in Turkish that sounds like a loan word and BAM you got the source of the new loan word. This opened a myriad new ways to expand the national myth, not only making Anatolia the most righteous land of Turks, it also made possible to claim every major civilization as your heritage. Some notable ones include:

•  Sumerians: They had some words hat sounded like Turkish words, they are Turkish. Turks invented writing, don't get jealous.
• Etruscans: "Etrusk" sounds like" Turk", they had legends that involves wolves, add some military culture BAM! Instant Turkish Roman Empire
• Hittites: They migrated from Asia, the ruler's wife had active responsibilities like in Turkish khanates also they of course had some words that sounded like Turkish words, which means Turks came first to Anatolia, take that Greeks!
• Northern American Natives: Nomadic culture? Check. Shamanistic beliefs and rituals? Check. Good at bows? Yes, what else do you want?
• American Natives like Mayans, Aztecs: They had baths, which only ever used, some words that sounds similar. Hard proof that Americas is Turk's land.

The Sun-Language Theory is never mentioned by Kemalists today when talking about Atatürk reforms. (But quite few of them still find some of its conclusions such as Sumerians being Turks at least somewhat credible) Of course, this part of history doesn't reflect well on the rationalist image of Atatürk. In reality, Atatürk was rationalist, fact-based, cold-calculating and pragmatist in a lot of ways. but his ideology didn't based on material reality so it's not surprising at all that he believed in such silly stuff.  This little page from history shows us that national and racial myths can be created on demand, expanded and re-written in a way that suits the nation-state needs or fit's that nationalist's particular image of his nation or race. National myths are quite similar to flat-earth theory, alien pyramids, trans people being a CIA psyop or often religious beliefs, not just because they are wacky but because they are actually necessary to sustain someone's ideology and feel themselves morally superior.
Statism: Endorsement of state capitalism. On the quest of creating a national bourgeoise  Turkey first tried to boost Turkish companies but that largely failed because there were too little capital. So the country was run with state industries, but there was a clash among intellectuals about how to use state industries. Atatürk and economic conservatives only wanted state involvement to develop a private economy but most Kemalists argued, and still argue, for a mixed model.
Populism: Endorsement of a welfare state. This is how Kemalists stole all the mainstream left from actual leftists in Turkey,  Despite no mainstream political position was really ever against regulations or welfare entirely in Turkey with there is no real equivalent of right-wing libertarians. This is similar to "Nazis being socialist" or white nationalists sometimes supporting welfare. Nationalists can pretend to be left just by supporting mildly social democratic positions, as long as bourgeoise stays in power particular details of economy holds little importance.
Kemalism, despite Kemalists often think, was largely succesful in its goals. A proper nation-state has been built with nationalism always being dominant in parliament and active in state's actions despite who was in charge of the country and Turkey became secular enough that religion became irrelevant while, despite what Islamists think, protecting religious morality of the state which was the realistic outcome for a 20th century nation-state. After all, religion is a useful tool for capitalists and it will always be popular as long as alienation of people exists.

3. Divergence and Variations (1950s-present): Let's pick the best color for your nation, all packed and shipped with anti-communism, free of charge

With nationalism fully established with its aggressively secular edges being rounded in time, what purpose was there to call yourself a nationalist anymore? The answer is clear of course, the nation wasn't exactly in the way nationalist desired. For an ideology that is supposedly about loving your people, the nation cannot ever be pure, virtuous, beautiful and glorious enough, as real people can never match up to a fictional image which nationalists cannot even agree on how exactly it looks like. Religion is the main reason of divergence in Turkish nationalism, as is often a large reason everywhere. There is just too many parties, organizations and movements to care about but they can more or less be grouped like this:,
Islamism:  Despite aggressive secularism, the old traditionalists survived one way or another. Islamism is conservatism who think Turks put "Turkness" as secondary, if not outright ignore it for a Muslim identity. Most of them support, revival of caliphate, pan-Islamism or neo-Ottomanism as well. While they won't accept themselves as nationalist, they essentially want to turn Islam into a national identity and their ideology works just like nationalism when looked at with this angle, so they are effectively different shapes of same poop.
Turk-Islamism: The most popular school of nationalism in Turkey. It has largest parties and has a lot of parties throughout history splitting over on exactly how much Islam and how much Turkness is the best mix. Often Pan-Turanist. AKP can overall be considered  Turk-Islamist, despite the popular thought more hardcore Islamists separated themselves over time. Economically both Islamists and Turk-Islamist make an emphasis on the small business.

[What a beautiful border gore would Pan-Turanist state cause]
Tengrist and Altaic Turanists: They don't have much of a platform but can be encountered online, sadly usually whenever old Turkish culture and mythology is discussed. They think Turks should separate all it's ties with the Muslim world and should seek to unite with not only other Turkic peoples but with other speakers of a now-unaccepted Ural-Altaic language tree. They are usually secular or worship Tengri, the Sky God of Turks, although I doubt they know too much about its pirinciples or rituals and probably call themselves s such because it's the "national religion" and not out of genuine interest in religion.

[That's...ambitious to say the least. It gives me ideas for a EU4 campaign]
Kemalists: Kemalists too became less aggressively secular and started to look like generic social democrats in time, but even today Kemalist nationalism is pretty active, just with occasional little tweaks and twists here and there.
If Kemalism just became the official ideology and Kemalists just filled in socdem positions, what did other nationalists do? The most notable thing they did was becoming foot soldiers for anti-communism in Turkey. For two decades they repeatedly attacked communists on their every action. With 1982 coup, new military regime attacked nationalists with almost same brutality as it attacked communism despite essentially holding same ideology, because they wanted to look like they provided justice, security and to instill political apathy and some sort of good-feels apolitical patriotism to people. After all communism was no more a threat, so hardcore ideologues were no longer necessary. The best part about this is nationalists aren't angry about coup at all. They either thought coup was an overall good thing or worshipped state too much that they just turned the other cheek, with their usual phrase "Finger that is cut by the state doesn't hurt!" The political apathy made Islamism rise in the population instead, eventually replacing the more secular/liberal right wingers.

4. Epilogue

Nationalism was a major disaster of people's of Anatolia. It gave Turks an identity, while varying, it goes as such: Proud of Ottomans and Atatürk, always upset about why Turkey isn't as strong as in the past, denies genocides (mostly due to genuine poor grasp of history to be fair), has no idea why Kurds are upset, loves soldiers a lot, gets really excited when Turkey gets succesful at an international event especially sports or a mildly famous person praises Turkey or a Turkish person gets famous worldwide for nearly any reason but get really salty when someone talks bad about Turkey. For the immigrants in the Europe, this identity usually gets worse because most can't ever truly feel like belong to somewhere. The minorities in Turkey, even with occasional progress, are continually oppressed and used as tools in political manuevers.
This story is no way unique for Anatolia. In most parts of the world there are no easy, convenient lines that divides people into nations. People who share the cultural heritage, history and fate are being crushed under imperialism together. National bourgeoise has always either sold their countries to imperialism or simply taken over the job imperialists had been doing. Today just like capitalism, imperialism has become global.   Anti-imperialism is often just reduced to military events but by just power plays between nations, people continue to suffer while bourgeoise is becoming richer, therefore imperialism is preserved globally. That's why a nation-state can only be either an imperialist puppet or a competing imperialist power and cannot ever be anti-imperialist. The only way to end imperialism is ending capitalism. No class collaboration will help and nationalism will always divide the people. The only way to liberation is solidarity with the people in all over the world.  While ending hierarchies between nations is extremely important, nationalism cannot help to solve this. National liberation can only be liberatory if it's done in solidarity with opressed people, which nationalism stand aganist.[15]
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[1] Two main reasons on why Christian minority was richer: 1. In 15th century, Ottomans reduced the custom tax of Venetian traders which at the time benefited the economy overall. In the next couple of centuries, tax cuts made for more European countries (notably France, later Britain) for political gains but as Ottomans lost power, they had to give more cuts to more countries out of obligation and especially after Industrial Revolution Turkish merchants and guilds are devastated while foreign merchant families who settled in Ottoman Empire quickly became rich and took control of manufactories. 2. In Ottoman Empire, Turks and Kurds were mostly farmers and made up majority of soldiers. Non-Muslims are banned from the military for most the empire's history (Although there were exceptions, especially in navy) and the other large Muslim group Arabs didn't get drafted too much as the state slowly lost its grip on local rule in the Middle East. Although Jewish families hold considerable capital, Jews didn't create an independence movement and too few in number to pose an immediate threat to the Party's plans and Anti-Semitism wasn't relevant in their minds so they were left alone.
[2] First Balkan Wars was special in the sense that it was one of the first times in history where Ottomans lost lands with significant cultural value and large Muslim and Turkish situation. Village raids and deportations of Muslims from the new Balkan nations killed the last hopes for Ottomanism.
[3] You can easily observe that they embraced the Orientalist view concerning the Turks at least to some extent, which means they are proud of a history that is manufactured by the civilizations they hate. Even today, Turanists are yet to realize this.
[4] Laz are Muslim people of Greek Ancestry that lives in the Black Sea coast.
[5] Zazas were mostly Muslim people who lives in Eastern Anatolia. They are frequently lapsed together with Kurds, but they are indeed have related but different cultures and languages.
[6] "Republic of Turkey". The word "Türkiye" has nothing to do with turkey the animal. It's source goes back to Eastern Roman Empire, meaning "the land of Turks", used as a name for the east of Caspian Sea and the Central Asia at the time, describing the area Turkic clans and khanates were in. The word "turkey" was given o the animals because turkeys was introduced to Americas by Turkish merchants.
[7] Kemalists prefer Atatürkism, "Atatürkçülük" in Turkish,  but I call Kemalism because it sounds less awkward in English.
[8] A sect of Shia Islam that was common in East Anatolia and Syria. One notable event in their oppression was the Dersim Rebellion, where thousands of Alawites and ethnic Zaza people were killed or displaced because they rejected Turkification attempts and refused to pay taxes.
[9]As a socialist I reject this on principle, for me revolutions are bottom-up movements. But "revolution"s of Turkey was merely top-down government reforms, most of them wasn't even radical as Kemalists try to make them seem so.
[10] An example that's insulting and silly at the same time was re-writing Kurds as "Mountain Turks who were named after because they created "kart-kurt" sounds while walking"
[11]An anecdote: Folk music and Ottoman orchestral music was banned to encourage Western music, but Atatürk was a huge fan of them. Nevertheless he mostly stayed dedicated to his cause, even if he occasionally broke the rule for himself.
[12]In 1930s, Turkey entered under a massive endeavour to cleanse the Turkish language from non Turkish originated words. Researchers were sent to the villages all over Turkey to record the words and phrases from the local folk. New words were invented based on regional or very old versions of Turkish, Atatürk personally invented some of the words himself. His surname literally meaning "the father of the Turk" come from the same trend. The problem was most people didn't know what these words mean and often there were more than one replacements for one word. That means no one actually understood what is written or spoken, language was unable to perform its main function! So with crushed hopes, "Pure-Turkish" was quickly abandoned. Until 1960s were it revived again, on a smaller scale but this time they just made-up words without the caring about the meaning or grammar, but with an added weirdness of re-writing Western loan words to make them sound like more Turkish. Unlike the first attempt, this one was successful on the new generation. Today, you can still find Pure-Turkish fans among hardcore Kemalists and nationalists, and of course they can't ever agree on how would it look like. People at Turkish Language Association still paid for inventing replacements for new loan words.  The legacy of this obsession? Well, it wasn't all bad. Reviving old or local words is actually kinda cool and some of the replacement words were pretty smart and more useful than old counterparts. On the other hand it made Turkish vocabulary smaller and made quite harder to read stuff from even 50 years ago for little practical gain. Most importantly, I still feel cringe at this because I supported Pure Turkish in my teen years before I learned how languages work.
[13]Hat was especially important, because Ottoman Empire determined someone's identity mainly with headwear. Fez and turban signified being Muslim and fedora signified being Christian. In Republic of Turkey, with "The Law of Hat" banned fez and turban and mandated to wear fedora for state officers. This law is still active on paper but dead in practice.
[14]Yep, skull-measuring was a thing in Turkey too. Although this was mostly about joining the Aryan-supremacy ride rather than creating your own racial hierarchy.
[15]We need to separate  nationalist ideologies from actually radical people who call themselves "nationalis"t for various reasons.The casual use of the word "nation" creates a lot of confusion in daily discourse concerning ongoing movements in the world. It is important to stress once again, nation is a strictly bourgeoise construct. This is why indigenous movements in Africa and America aren't "national liberation" movements in the liberal sense, that implies Natives simply desire a USA with White officers, cops and company owners simply replaced by Native ones. Native liberation movement in USA intersects with Black Liberation movement and White people too has a part in decolonization and should stand in solidarity with Natives . Indigenous liberation are about reclaiming their identity, land a culture that was stolen from them, not creating a new artificial identity.  Indigenous movements are always at least implicitly anti-capitalist. This shows us Indigenous movements are radical liberatory movements with from an angle of national and ethnic identity.. On the other hand, a perfect example of a liberal national liberation movement is Catalonian independence. If Catalonia becomes an independent nation a Catalan's worker's life will stay  fundamentally same as before, except now they can feel "proud and independent" while selling their wage to their Catalan bosses. Although there is nothing wrong with secession of minorities to gain short-term liberation from national angle, open endorsement of such liberal national movements is not fruitful for socialism