15 Facts About Kemalism

Kemalism, known as Ataturkism (Turkish: Ataturkculuk, Ataturkcu dusunce), or The Six Arrows (Turkish: Alti Ok), is the founding official ideology of the Republic of Turkey.

Many of the root ideas of Kemalism began during the late Ottoman Empire under various reforms to avoid the imminent collapse of the Empire, beginning chiefly in the early 19th-century Tanzimat reforms.

Kemalism is a modernization philosophy which guided the transition between the multi-religious, multi-ethnic Ottoman Empire to the secular, democratic, and unitary Republic of Turkey.

In defending the change from the Ottoman State, Kemalism asserts that all laws of the Republic of Turkey should be inspired by actual needs here on Earth as a basic tenet of national life.

Kemalism strove to control religion and transform it into a private affair rather than an institution interfering with politics, as well as scientific and social progress.

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From a political perspective, Kemalism is anti-clerical, in that it seeks to prevent religious influence on the democratic process, which was a problem even in the largely secular politics of the Second Constitutional Era of the Ottoman Empire, when even non-religiously affiliated political parties like the Committee of Union and Progress and the Freedom and Accord Party feuded over matters such as the Islamic piety of their candidates in the Ottoman elections of 1912.

Kemalism focused on the nation-state's narrower interests, renouncing the concern for the "Outside Turks".

Pan-Turkism was an ethnocentric ideology [to unite all ethnically Turkic nations] while Kemalism is polycentric [united under a " common will"] in character.

Kemalism wants to have an equal footing among the mainstream world civilizations.

Kemalism wants an equal footing and does not aim to unite the people of Turkey with all the other Turkic nations.

Kemalism supported reopening of Turkish magazine "Turk Yurdu" which was propagating Pan-Turkism.

Kemalism had a narrower definition of language, which sought to remove the Persian, Arabic, Greek, Latin, etc.

Kemalism gave an important place to Hittites and the Hittite symbolism to construct the Turkish identity and nationhood.

Some scholars have focused on the interwar period in Bulgaria, Cyprus, Albania, Yugoslavia, and Egypt to reveal how, as a practical tool, Kemalism was relocated as a global movement, whose influence is still felt today.

These works explore perceptions of Kemalism that are mostly positive in their respective countries providing few critical insights into Kemalism's evolution and its reception as an ideological project.