Turkish nationalism

Turkish nationalism (Türk milliyetçiliği) is a political ideology that promotes and glorifies the Turkish people, as either national or ethnic definition. The term "ultranationalism" is often used to describe Turkish nationalism. Pan-Turkism#History After the fall of the Ottoman Empire, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk came to power. He introduced a language reform with the aim to "cleanse" the Turkish language of foreign (mostly Arabic and Persian) influence. He also promoted the Turkish History Thesis in Turkish political and educational circles from 1930s. Turkish researchers at the time like Hüseyin Cahit Yalçın and Rıfat Osman Bey also came up with the idea that Early Sumerians were proto-Turks. The early Turkish nationalists were typically secular and often influenced by Ziya Gökalp (1876–1924). Gökalp aimed for the Turkification of Islam; that the Quran should be translated from Arabic into Turkish, and that the adhan should be recited in Turkish instead of Arabic from the Minarets. During the early years of the republic, religious traditions were not important and Turkish nationalists were much more open to the westernization of the Turkish society. Ideologies associated with Turkish nationalism include Pan-Turkism or Turanism (a form of ethnic or racial essentialism or national mysticism), Turkish-Islamic synthesis (which combines Turkish nationalism with Islamic identity), Anatolianism (which considers the Turkish nation as a separate entity which developed after the Seljuk conquest of Anatolia in the 11th century), and secular, civic nationalist Kemalism (which defines the "Turks" as the national identity of the people of Turkey). Kemalism Implemented by Atatürk, the founding ideology of the Republic of Turkey features nationalism (milliyetçilik) as one of its six principles. The Kemalist revolution aimed to create a nation state from the remnants of the multi-religious and multi-ethnic Ottoman Empire. Kemalist nationalism originates from the social contract theories, especially from the civic nationalist principles advocated by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and his Social Contract.