Nationalism and Kemalism
Nationalism and Kemalism
This chapter examines Turkish nationalism and Kemalism. The elimination of Islam as an ideological pillar of the main Ottoman successor state created a legitimacy vacuum at the center of the regime. Furthermore, the abolition of the sultanate and the dissolution of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) had given rise to a second void necessitating the creation of substitute foci for popular allegiance—both personal and institutional. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk sought to fill this lacuna with a new civic religion buttressed by a number of cults. The new ideology, unsurprisingly, was a modified, scientifically sanctioned version of Turkish nationalism. In the 1930s, Mustafa Kemal's followers and party pulled together various strands of several associated cults to create Kemalism, an all-encompassing state ideology based on his sayings and writings.
Keywords: Turkish nationalism, Kemalism, Islam, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, civic religion, cults
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