Ziya Gökalp

Ziya Gökalp (1876–1924) was a Turkish sociologist, poet and politician who worked at the close of the Ottoman Empire and in the early years of the Turkish republic. He is remembered as a key theorist of Turkish national identity. His ideas shaped the intellectual path that led to Kemalism, and they remain a subject of sharp debate.

Born in Diyarbakır, a city he later described as a cultural frontier between Turks, Kurds and Armenians, he moved to Istanbul in 1895. There he left veterinary studies, joined underground revolutionary circles and spent ten months in prison. After the 1908 revolution he became a member of the Committee of Union and Progress and took the pen name Gökalp, which he kept for the rest of his life.

His thought blended the sociology of Émile Durkheim with nationalism. He rejected Ottomanism and Islamism as bases for identity and argued that a nation is defined by a shared language and culture rather than by territory. He contrasted culture, with its communal values, against civilization, which he linked to individualism, and he pointed to Japan as a model of modernization that kept its identity intact.

After the First World War he was exiled to Malta from 1919 to 1921, and there he wrote The Principles of Turkism. Back in Turkey he directed publications and took part in the educational reforms of the new republic, and he served in the National Assembly until his death in 1924.

His legacy is contested. He is called the father of Turkish nationalism, yet many historians argue that his ideas about cultural homogeneity fed the climate in which the Armenian genocide took place.