| Summary/Abstract |
This article addresses the nationality issue in the post-First World War Turkey through an analysis of the vibrant debates on the future of the defeated Ottoman state and its peoples. It focuses on how nationality was formulated, specifically, by the Ottoman Muslim-Turkish intellectuals, publicists and by the leadership of the National Struggle. Their interpretations of Ottomanism, Turkish nationalism, the wartime destruction of the Armenians, the situation of the Greeks and the future of the Kurds is analyzed in this respect by using the columns and editorials of contemporaneous newspapers and printed official documents. It argues that the diametrically opposed secular Ottoman nationalism cherishing co-existence of all ethnic and religious groups and the Ottomanism based on Muslimness-Turkishness were reformulated in radically changed geopolitical and demographic circumstances as the basis of the future collective identity.
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