No other book has influenced the development of modern Turkish nationalism as profoundly and enduringly as Ziya Gökalp’s The Principles of Turkism. First published in 1923, it is still in print in Turkey today, more than a century later, in numerous editions. Its enduring presence confirms that it is not merely a historical document, but a text that continues to exert considerable influence on Turkish political and intellectual life.
A theorist and propagandist of Young Turk nationalism, one of the Young Turks’ most important intellectual guides and an ideological forerunner of the Kemalist state, Gökalp seeks not merely to answer the question “Who are the Turks?” but the far more ambitious one: “Who should the Turks become?” The Principles of Turkism sets out a comprehensive program for building the modern Turkish nation, in which language, religion, education, history and social life as a whole are to be reshaped in accordance with the dictates of Turkism.
Behind its theoretical distinctions and sociological analyses lies a vision of a unified and homogeneous Turkey, where distinct identities and cultural differences—and those who embody them—must disappear before Turkish national identity and unity. Gökalp’s views on assimilation, cultural homogenization and the eradication of differences helped shape policies that, when implemented in their most extreme form, led to persecution, deportations, confiscation and seizure of property, the destruction of livelihoods, and ethnic cleansing.
Anyone seeking to understand modern Turkey, the thinking of its political and military elite, and the logic behind Turkish nationalism from the early 20th century to the present day will find in The Principles of Turkism one of the clearest statements of its ideological foundations.
