Understanding Turkish Nationalism

by Yasser Latif Hamdani

Further to the Part 2 of Shaheryar Ali’s “Historiography” series, in particular the tangential reference to Turkish Nationalism contained therein, I am sharing a few thoughts for the readers of the Pak Tea House.

Given the importance of the said discussion, it is important to set the record on straight.  Ali’s main thrust is that since Kemal Ataturk’s Turkish Nationalism took an increasingly European character, it was not a kind of Muslim nationalism but an ethnic one or linguistic one.  All of the arguments thus presented have not done anything to reveal the true nature of Turkish nationalism but rather rely on subsequent modernist endeavors of Ataturk and the Kemalist Turkish state to move away from an overtly Islamic identity to whitewash the history and context of Ataturk’s tremendous achievement i.e. leading a multitude of hapless and disoriented Muslim masses to modern nationhood and a republican national state.