Forging a Nation from Within

This chapter examines how the contours of identity politics take shape, exploring the tools and practices by which supporters of an identity proposal strive to achieve hegemony. The chapter also lays the empirical foundation for an analysis of identity contestation in Turkey, inside and out. It traces how Republican Nationalism formed as a proposal for a new national identity in the wake of the Ottoman collapse, highlighting how the constitutive experience of imperial loss shaped this understanding. The chapter provides extensive evidence of how Republican Nationalists infuse this Western, secular, nonethnic identity proposal into domestic institutions to combat contestation from those supporting Ottoman Islamist, Pan-Turkic Nationalist, as well as Kurdish Nationalist proposals.