Ziya Gökalp
Encyclopedia
Ziya Gökalp was a Turkish
sociologist, writer, poet, and political activist. In 1908, after the Young Turk revolution, he adopted the pen name Gökalp ("sky hero"), which he retained for the rest of his life. As a sociologist, Ziya Gökalp was influential in the overhaul of religious perceptions and evolving of Turkish nationalism.
Gökalp's work was particularly influential in shaping the reforms of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
; his influence figured prominently in the development of Kemalism, and its legacy in the modern Republic of Turkey. Influenced by contemporary European thought, Gökalp rejected Ottomanism
and Islamism
in favor of Turkish nationalism. He advocated a Turkification
of the Ottoman Empire
, by imposing the Turkish language and culture onto all the citizenry. His thought, which popularized Pan-Turkism
and Turanism
, has been described as a "cult of nationalism and modernization".
His nationalist ideals espoused a de-identification with Ottoman Turkey's Muslim neighbors, in lieu of a supernational Turkish (or pan-Turkic
) identity with "a territorial Northeast-orientation [to] Turkish speaking
peoples".
, Diyarbakır Province
on March 23, 1876. He was of Zaza
descent. Diyarbakır Province was a "cultural frontier", having been ruled by Arabs and Persians until the 16th century, and featuring "conflicting national traditions" among the local populations of Turks, Kurds, and Armenians
. This cultural environment has often been suggested to have informed his sense of national identity; later in his life, when political detractors suggested that he was of Kurdish extraction, Gökalp responded that while he was certain of patrilineal Turkish racial heritage, this was insignificant: "I learned through my sociological studies that nationality is based solely on upbringing." Some historians nonetheless characterize him as being of Kurdish
origin.
After attending secondary school in Diyarbakır, he settled in Constantinople, in 1896. There, he attended veterinary school
and became involved in underground revolutionary politics, for which he served ten months in prison. He developed relationships with many figures of the revolutionary underground in this period, abandoned his veterinary studies, and became a member of the underground revolutionary group, the Society of Union and Progress. The revolutionary currents of Constantinople at the time were extremely varied; the unpopularity of the Abdul Hamid II
regime had by this time awakened diverse revolutionary sentiment in Constantinople.
, to "Gökalp", meaning "Sky warrior" or "Blue warrior" in Old Turkish
.
Gökalp's work, in the context of the decline of the Ottoman Empire
, was instrumental in the development of Turkish national identity, which he himself referred to even then as Turkishness. He believed that a nation must have a "shared consciousness" in order to survive, that "the individual becomes a genuine personality only as he becomes a genuine representative of his culture". He believed that a modern state must become homogeneous in terms of culture, religion, and national identity. This conception of national identity was augmented by his belief in the primacy of Turkishness, as a unifying virtue. In a 1911 article, he suggested that "Turks are the 'supermen
' imagined by the German philosopher Nietzsche".
His major sociological work was interested in differentiating Avrupalılık ("Europeanism", the mimicking of Western societies) and Modernlik ("Modernity", taking initiative); he was interested in Japan
as a model in this, for what he perceived to be its having modernized without abandoning its innate cultural identity. Gökalp suggested that to subordinate "culture" (non-utilitarianism, altruism, public-spiritedness) to "civilization" (utilitarianism, egoism, individualism) was to doom a state to decline: "civilization destroyed societal solidarity and morality".
Informed by his reading of Émile Durkheim
, Gökalp concluded that Western liberalism, as a social system, was inferior to solidarism
, because liberalism encouraged individualism, which in turn diminished the integrity of the state. Durkheim, whose work Gökalp himself translated into Turkish
, perceived religion as a means of unifying a population socially, and even "religion as society's worship of itself". Durkheim's assertion that the life of the group was more important than the life of the individual, this was a concept readily adopted by Gökalp.
A well-known newspaper columnist and political figure, Gökalp was a primary ideologue of the Committee of Union and Progress
. His views of "nation", and the ways in which they have informed the development of the modern Turkish state, have made for a controversial legacy. Many historians and sociologists have suggested that his brand of nationalism contributed to the Armenian Genocide
. His conception of nation was of a "social solidarity" that necessitated "cultural unity". "Geographic nationalism", in which everyone living under one political system was a part of the nation, was unacceptable to Gökalp, who conceived of a nation as linguistically and culturally unified. Finally, merely to believe one was a part of a nation, this was not enough, either; one cannot choose to belong to the nation, in his view, as membership in the nation is involuntary. After World War I, he was arrested for his involvement in the Committee of Union and Progress, and briefly exiled from the country.
His poetry departs from his more serious sociological works, though it too harnesses nationalist sentiment: "Run, take the standard and let it be planted once again in Plevna
/ Night and day, let the waters of the Danube
run red with blood...." Perhaps his most famous poem was his 1911 Turan, which served to compliment his Turanist intellectual output: "For the Turks, Fatherland means neither Turkey, nor Turkestan
; Fatherland is a large and eternal country--Turan
!" During the First World War, his Kızıl Destan ("Red Epic") called for destroying Russia
in the interest of pan-Turkism.
He proceeds to lay out the three echelons of pan-Turkist identity that he envisions:
The second stage was "Oghuzism", and the final stage would be the "Turanism
" that he and other nationalist poets had been promoting since before World War I. While this broad conception of "Turkishness", of pan-Turkism, often embraced what Gökalp perceived to be ethnic commonality, he did not disparage other races, as some of his pan-Turkist successors later did.
was Byzantine
in origin; this led to the state briefly banning Ottoman classical music from the radio in the 1930s, because Turkish folk music
alone "represented the genius of the nation".
For popularizing pan-Turkism
and Turanism
, Gökalp has been viewed alternately as being racist and expansionist, and anti-racist and anti-expansionist. These opposite readings of his legacy are not easily divisible into proponents and detractors, as racist and fascist elements in Turkey (such as the "Nationalist Action Party") have appropriated his work to contend that he supported a physical realization of Turanism, rather than a mere ideological pan-Turkist kinship. Some readings of Gökalp contend, to the contrary, that his Turanism and pan-Turkism were linguistic and cultural models, ideals from which a post-Ottoman identity could be derived, rather than a militant call for the physical expansion of the Republic of Turkey. Guenter Lewy
writes that "practically all interpreters of Gökalp's thought stress that his notion of Turan or Turanism did not involve any expansionist plans".
For espousing a "homogeneous nation" and rejecting minority rights and minority identity, Gökalp has often been associated with the Armenian Genocide. Historian James Reid has asserted that "What Wagner was to Hitler, Gökalp was to Enver Pasha." Gökalp's writing has more recently figured in nationalist discourse in regards to Turkey's Kurdish minority
. Turkish nationalist academics have cited Gökalp in contending "there is no such thing as the Kurdish people
".
Although he often held quite different ideas, Arab nationalist Sati al-Husri was profoundly influenced by Gökalp.
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
sociologist, writer, poet, and political activist. In 1908, after the Young Turk revolution, he adopted the pen name Gökalp ("sky hero"), which he retained for the rest of his life. As a sociologist, Ziya Gökalp was influential in the overhaul of religious perceptions and evolving of Turkish nationalism.
Gökalp's work was particularly influential in shaping the reforms of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
Atatürk's Reforms
Atatürk's Reforms were a series of political, legal, cultural, social and economic reforms that were designed to modernize the new Republic of Turkey into a democratic and secular nation-state...
; his influence figured prominently in the development of Kemalism, and its legacy in the modern Republic of Turkey. Influenced by contemporary European thought, Gökalp rejected Ottomanism
Ottomanism
Ottomanism was a concept which developed prior to the First Constitutional Era of the Ottoman Empire. Its proponents believed that it could solve the social issues that the empire was facing. Ottomanism was highly affected by thinkers such as Montesquieu and Rousseau and the French Revolution. It...
and Islamism
Islamism
Islamism also , lit., "Political Islam" is set of ideologies holding that Islam is not only a religion but also a political system. Islamism is a controversial term, and definitions of it sometimes vary...
in favor of Turkish nationalism. He advocated a Turkification
Turkification
Turkification is a term used to describe a process of cultural or political change in which something or someone who is not a Turk becomes one, voluntarily or involuntarily...
of the Ottoman Empire
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
, by imposing the Turkish language and culture onto all the citizenry. His thought, which popularized 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:...
and Turanism
Turanism
Turanism, or Pan-Turanism, is a political movement for the union of all Turanian peoples. It implies not merely the unity of all Turkic peoples , but also the unification of a wider Turanid "race", also known as the controversial Uralo-Altaic "race," believed to include all peoples speaking...
, has been described as a "cult of nationalism and modernization".
His nationalist ideals espoused a de-identification with Ottoman Turkey's Muslim neighbors, in lieu of a supernational Turkish (or pan-Turkic
Turkic peoples
The Turkic peoples are peoples residing in northern, central and western Asia, southern Siberia and northwestern China and parts of eastern Europe. They speak languages belonging to the Turkic language family. They share, to varying degrees, certain cultural traits and historical backgrounds...
) identity with "a territorial Northeast-orientation [to] Turkish speaking
Turkic languages
The Turkic languages constitute a language family of at least thirty five languages, spoken by Turkic peoples across a vast area from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean to Siberia and Western China, and are considered to be part of the proposed Altaic language family.Turkic languages are spoken...
peoples".
Early life
Mehmed Ziya was born in ÇermikÇermik
Çermik is a town and district of Diyarbakır Province of Turkey. The population is 17962 -References:...
, Diyarbakır Province
Diyarbakir Province
Diyarbakır Province is a province in eastern Turkey. The province covers an area of 15,355 km² and the population is 1,528,958. The provincial capital is Diyarbakir...
on March 23, 1876. He was of Zaza
Zaza people
The Zazas, Kird, Kirmanc or Dimilis are an ethnic Iranic people whose native language is Zazaki spoken in eastern Anatolia. They primarily live in the eastern Anatolian provinces, such as Adıyaman, Aksaray, Batman, Bingöl, Diyarbakır, Elazığ, Erzurum, Erzincan , Gumushane, Kars, Malatya, Mus,...
descent. Diyarbakır Province was a "cultural frontier", having been ruled by Arabs and Persians until the 16th century, and featuring "conflicting national traditions" among the local populations of Turks, Kurds, and Armenians
Armenians
Armenian people or Armenians are a nation and ethnic group native to the Armenian Highland.The largest concentration is in Armenia having a nearly-homogeneous population with 97.9% or 3,145,354 being ethnic Armenian....
. This cultural environment has often been suggested to have informed his sense of national identity; later in his life, when political detractors suggested that he was of Kurdish extraction, Gökalp responded that while he was certain of patrilineal Turkish racial heritage, this was insignificant: "I learned through my sociological studies that nationality is based solely on upbringing." Some historians nonetheless characterize him as being of Kurdish
Kurdish people
The Kurdish people, or Kurds , are an Iranian people native to the Middle East, mostly inhabiting a region known as Kurdistan, which includes adjacent parts of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey...
origin.
After attending secondary school in Diyarbakır, he settled in Constantinople, in 1896. There, he attended veterinary school
Veterinary school
A veterinary school is a tertiary educational institution, or part of such an institution, which is involved in the education of veterinarians. To become a veterinarian one must first complete a veterinary degree A veterinary school should not be confused with a department of animal science...
and became involved in underground revolutionary politics, for which he served ten months in prison. He developed relationships with many figures of the revolutionary underground in this period, abandoned his veterinary studies, and became a member of the underground revolutionary group, the Society of Union and Progress. The revolutionary currents of Constantinople at the time were extremely varied; the unpopularity of the Abdul Hamid II
Abdul Hamid II
His Imperial Majesty, The Sultan Abdülhamid II, Emperor of the Ottomans, Caliph of the Faithful was the 34th sultan of the Ottoman Empire...
regime had by this time awakened diverse revolutionary sentiment in Constantinople.
Career
Mehmed Ziya changed his name, initially as a pen namePen name
A pen name, nom de plume, or literary double, is a pseudonym adopted by an author. A pen name may be used to make the author's name more distinctive, to disguise his or her gender, to distance an author from some or all of his or her works, to protect the author from retribution for his or her...
, to "Gökalp", meaning "Sky warrior" or "Blue warrior" in Old Turkish
Turkish language
Turkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...
.
Gökalp's work, in the context of the decline of the Ottoman Empire
Decline of the Ottoman Empire
The Decline of the Ottoman Empire is the period that followed after the Stagnation of the Ottoman Empire in which the empire experienced several economic and political setbacks. Directly affecting the Empire at this time was Russian imperialism...
, was instrumental in the development of Turkish national identity, which he himself referred to even then as Turkishness. He believed that a nation must have a "shared consciousness" in order to survive, that "the individual becomes a genuine personality only as he becomes a genuine representative of his culture". He believed that a modern state must become homogeneous in terms of culture, religion, and national identity. This conception of national identity was augmented by his belief in the primacy of Turkishness, as a unifying virtue. In a 1911 article, he suggested that "Turks are the 'supermen
Übermensch
The Übermensch is a concept in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche posited the Übermensch as a goal for humanity to set for itself in his 1883 book Thus Spoke Zarathustra ....
' imagined by the German philosopher Nietzsche".
His major sociological work was interested in differentiating Avrupalılık ("Europeanism", the mimicking of Western societies) and Modernlik ("Modernity", taking initiative); he was interested in Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
as a model in this, for what he perceived to be its having modernized without abandoning its innate cultural identity. Gökalp suggested that to subordinate "culture" (non-utilitarianism, altruism, public-spiritedness) to "civilization" (utilitarianism, egoism, individualism) was to doom a state to decline: "civilization destroyed societal solidarity and morality".
Informed by his reading of Émile Durkheim
Émile Durkheim
David Émile Durkheim was a French sociologist. He formally established the academic discipline and, with Karl Marx and Max Weber, is commonly cited as the principal architect of modern social science and father of sociology.Much of Durkheim's work was concerned with how societies could maintain...
, Gökalp concluded that Western liberalism, as a social system, was inferior to solidarism
Solidarism
Solidarism can refer to:*The term "Solidarism" is applied to the sociopolitical thought advanced by Émile Durkheim which is loosely applied to a leading social philosophy operative during and within the French Third Republic prior to the First World War....
, because liberalism encouraged individualism, which in turn diminished the integrity of the state. Durkheim, whose work Gökalp himself translated into Turkish
Turkish language
Turkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...
, perceived religion as a means of unifying a population socially, and even "religion as society's worship of itself". Durkheim's assertion that the life of the group was more important than the life of the individual, this was a concept readily adopted by Gökalp.
Committee of Union and Progress
The Committee of Union and Progress began as a secret society established as the "Committee of Ottoman Union" in 1889 by the medical students İbrahim Temo, Abdullah Cevdet, İshak Sükuti and Ali Hüseyinzade...
. His views of "nation", and the ways in which they have informed the development of the modern Turkish state, have made for a controversial legacy. Many historians and sociologists have suggested that his brand of nationalism contributed to the Armenian Genocide
Armenian Genocide
The Armenian Genocide—also known as the Armenian Holocaust, the Armenian Massacres and, by Armenians, as the Great Crime—refers to the deliberate and systematic destruction of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire during and just after World War I...
. His conception of nation was of a "social solidarity" that necessitated "cultural unity". "Geographic nationalism", in which everyone living under one political system was a part of the nation, was unacceptable to Gökalp, who conceived of a nation as linguistically and culturally unified. Finally, merely to believe one was a part of a nation, this was not enough, either; one cannot choose to belong to the nation, in his view, as membership in the nation is involuntary. After World War I, he was arrested for his involvement in the Committee of Union and Progress, and briefly exiled from the country.
Poetic works
In addition to his sociological and political career, Gökalp was also a prolific poet. His poetic work served to compliment and popularize his sociological and nationalist views. In style and content, it revived a sense of pre-Islamic Turkish identity. The protagonist in his Kızılelma, the "ideal woman", suggests: "The people is like a garden, / we are supposed to be its gardeners! / First the bad shoots are to be cut / and then the scion is to be grafted." She is the teacher at Yeni Hayat ("New Life"), where Eastern and Western ideals meet and form a "new Turkish World".His poetry departs from his more serious sociological works, though it too harnesses nationalist sentiment: "Run, take the standard and let it be planted once again in Plevna
Plevna
Plevna may refer to:* Plevna, an old name for the city of Pleven, Bulgaria. Pleven was known by English speakers as Plevna during the Russo-Turkish war in 1877, when the Siege of Plevna became the key for claiming victory in the war...
/ Night and day, let the waters of the Danube
Danube
The Danube is a river in the Central Europe and the Europe's second longest river after the Volga. It is classified as an international waterway....
run red with blood...." Perhaps his most famous poem was his 1911 Turan, which served to compliment his Turanist intellectual output: "For the Turks, Fatherland means neither Turkey, nor Turkestan
Turkestan
Turkestan, spelled also as Turkistan, literally means "Land of the Turks".The term Turkestan is of Persian origin and has never been in use to denote a single nation. It was first used by Persian geographers to describe the place of Turkish peoples...
; Fatherland is a large and eternal country--Turan
Turan
Tūrān is the Persian name for Central Asia, literally meaning "the land of the Tur". As described below, the original Turanians are an Iranian tribe of the Avestan age. As a people the "Turanian" are one of the two Iranian peoples both descending from the Persian Fereydun but with different...
!" During the First World War, his Kızıl Destan ("Red Epic") called for destroying Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
in the interest of pan-Turkism.
The Principles of Turkism
His 1923 The Principles of Turkism, published just a year prior to his death, outlines the expansive nationalist identity he had long popularized in his teachings and poetry. The nationalism he espouses entails "a nation [that] is not a racial or ethnic or geographic or political or volitional group but one composed of individuals who share a common language, religion, morality, and aesthetics, that is to say, who have received the same education."He proceeds to lay out the three echelons of pan-Turkist identity that he envisions:
- the Turks in the Republic of Turkey, a nation according to cultural and other criteria;
- the Oghuz TurksOghuz TurksThe Turkomen also known as Oghuz Turks were a historical Turkic tribal confederation in Central Asia during the early medieval Turkic expansion....
, referring also to the TurkmenTurkmen peopleThe Turkmen are a Turkic people located primarily in the Central Asian states of Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and northeastern Iran. They speak the Turkmen language, which is classified as a part of the Western Oghuz branch of the Turkic languages family together with Turkish, Azerbaijani, Qashqai,...
s of Azerbayjan, IranIranIran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
and Khwarizm who... essentially have one common culture which is the same as that of the Turks of Turkey—all these four forming Oghuzistan; - more distant, Turkic-speaking peoples, such as the YakutsYakutsYakuts , are a Turkic people associated with the Sakha Republic.The Yakut or Sakha language belongs to the Northern branch of the Turkic family of languages....
, Kirghiz, UzbeksUzbeksThe Uzbeks are a Turkic ethnic group in Central Asia. They comprise the majority population of Uzbekistan, and large populations can also be found in Afghanistan, Tajikstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Pakistan, Mongolia and the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China...
, KipchaksKipchaksKipchaks were a Turkic tribal confederation...
and TatarsTatarsTatars are a Turkic speaking ethnic group , numbering roughly 7 million.The majority of Tatars live in the Russian Federation, with a population of around 5.5 million, about 2 million of which in the republic of Tatarstan.Significant minority populations are found in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan,...
, possessed of a traditional linguistic and ethnic unity, having affinity—but not identity—with the Turkish culture.
The second stage was "Oghuzism", and the final stage would be the "Turanism
Turanism
Turanism, or Pan-Turanism, is a political movement for the union of all Turanian peoples. It implies not merely the unity of all Turkic peoples , but also the unification of a wider Turanid "race", also known as the controversial Uralo-Altaic "race," believed to include all peoples speaking...
" that he and other nationalist poets had been promoting since before World War I. While this broad conception of "Turkishness", of pan-Turkism, often embraced what Gökalp perceived to be ethnic commonality, he did not disparage other races, as some of his pan-Turkist successors later did.
Legacy
Gökalp has been characterized as "the father of Turkish nationalism", and even "the Grand Master of Turkism". His thought figured prominently in the political landscape of the Republic of Turkey, which emerged from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire around the time of his death. His influence resonated in diverse ways. For instance, his Principles of Turkism had contended that Ottoman classical musicOttoman classical music
Ottoman classical music developed in Istanbul and major Ottoman towns from Skopje to Cairo, from Tabriz to Morocco through the palace, mosques, and sufi lodges of the Ottoman Empire. Above all a vocal music, Ottoman music traditionally accompanies a solo singer with a small instrumental ensemble...
was Byzantine
Byzantine Empire
The Byzantine Empire was the Eastern Roman Empire during the periods of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, centred on the capital of Constantinople. Known simply as the Roman Empire or Romania to its inhabitants and neighbours, the Empire was the direct continuation of the Ancient Roman State...
in origin; this led to the state briefly banning Ottoman classical music from the radio in the 1930s, because Turkish folk music
Turkish folk music
Turkish folk music combines the distinct cultural values of all civilisations that have lived in Anatolia and the Ottoman territories in Europe and Asia...
alone "represented the genius of the nation".
For popularizing 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:...
and Turanism
Turanism
Turanism, or Pan-Turanism, is a political movement for the union of all Turanian peoples. It implies not merely the unity of all Turkic peoples , but also the unification of a wider Turanid "race", also known as the controversial Uralo-Altaic "race," believed to include all peoples speaking...
, Gökalp has been viewed alternately as being racist and expansionist, and anti-racist and anti-expansionist. These opposite readings of his legacy are not easily divisible into proponents and detractors, as racist and fascist elements in Turkey (such as the "Nationalist Action Party") have appropriated his work to contend that he supported a physical realization of Turanism, rather than a mere ideological pan-Turkist kinship. Some readings of Gökalp contend, to the contrary, that his Turanism and pan-Turkism were linguistic and cultural models, ideals from which a post-Ottoman identity could be derived, rather than a militant call for the physical expansion of the Republic of Turkey. Guenter Lewy
Guenter Lewy
Guenter Lewy is an author and political scientist who is a professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts. His works span several topics, but he is most often associated with his 1978 book on the Vietnam War, America in Vietnam, and several controversial works that deal with the...
writes that "practically all interpreters of Gökalp's thought stress that his notion of Turan or Turanism did not involve any expansionist plans".
For espousing a "homogeneous nation" and rejecting minority rights and minority identity, Gökalp has often been associated with the Armenian Genocide. Historian James Reid has asserted that "What Wagner was to Hitler, Gökalp was to Enver Pasha." Gökalp's writing has more recently figured in nationalist discourse in regards to Turkey's Kurdish minority
Kurds in Turkey
Ethnic Kurds compose a significant portion of the population in Turkey . Unlike the Turks, the Kurds speak an Indo-European language...
. Turkish nationalist academics have cited Gökalp in contending "there is no such thing as the Kurdish people
Kurdish people
The Kurdish people, or Kurds , are an Iranian people native to the Middle East, mostly inhabiting a region known as Kurdistan, which includes adjacent parts of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey...
".
Although he often held quite different ideas, Arab nationalist Sati al-Husri was profoundly influenced by Gökalp.
Works
- Principles of Turkism
- History of Turkish Civilization
- Kızılelma (poems)
- Turkism, Islamism and Modernism
- History of Kurdish Tribes (Kürt Aşiretleri Hakkında Sosyolojik Tetkikler)
Further reading
- Taha Parla: The social and political thought of Ziya Gökalp : 1876 - 1924. Leiden 1985
- Mihran Dabag: Jungtürkische Visionen und der Völkermord an den Armeniern, in: Dabag / Platt: Genozid und Moderne (Band 1), Opladen 1998. ISBN 3-8100-1822-8
- Katy Schröder: Die Türkei im Schatten des Nationalismus. Hamburg, 2003, ISBN 3-8311-4266-1, S. 50-54