Moiz Cohen who later changed his name to Munis Tekinalp, was born to a Jewish family in Serres

Serres

Serres is a city in Greece, seat of the Serres prefecture.Serres may also refer to:Places:* Serres, Germany, a part of Wiernsheim in Baden-WürttembergIn France:* Serres, Aude in the Aude département...

. He was sent for schooling in the Alliance Israelite Univeselle school in Salonica, continuing for a rabbinical ordination (though he never practiced). He would later continue to legal studies in Salonica, completing them in Istanbul after Salonica fell to Greece. He would later became one of the founding fathers of Turkish nationalism and an ideologue of Pan-Turkism

Pan-Turkism

Pan-Turkism is a nationalist movement that emerged in 1880s among the Turkic intellectuals of the Russian Empire, with the aim of cultural and political unification of all Turkic peoples.-Name:...

, then of Kemalism, after 1923. He was a proponent of minorities within the Turkish Republic

Turkey

Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...

 Turk-ifying themselves, and wrote such in his pamphlet Türkleştirme (1928). He presented the principles of Kemalism in a book published in Istanbul

Istanbul

Istanbul , historically known as Byzantium and Constantinople , is the largest city of Turkey. Istanbul metropolitan province had 13.26 million people living in it as of December, 2010, which is 18% of Turkey's population and the 3rd largest metropolitan area in Europe after London and...

 in 1936, then updated and translated into French one year later, with a preface by Édouard Herriot

Édouard Herriot

Édouard Marie Herriot was a French Radical politician of the Third Republic who served three times as Prime Minister and for many years as President of the Chamber of Deputies....

(Le Kémalisme, Paris: Félix Alcan Publisher, 1937).