Ottoman Nationalism in Transition from Empire to Republic, 1908–1931

This book deals with the complex process of national identity formation in the late Ottoman Empire and early Turkish Republic, during a crucial period characterized by transformative events that reshaped both the state and society. These events included revolutions, wars, mass migrations, ethnic cleansing, genocide, the empire's disintegration, territorial and demographic changes, and the emergence of new states. In the face of these events, a multitude of old and new formulations and imaginings of nation and national identity took shape and interacted with each other. This book focuses on highlighting the diversity of concepts and trajectories that existed during the period and how these played out within a complex web of inclusionary and exclusionary processes, and the various ways in which the nation was constituted and  conceptualized.

Abdullah Simsek was born in Turkey and later moved to Denmark at the age of ten, where he has resided since. He studied history, philosophy, and Middle Eastern and Islamic studies at the University of Copenhagen, where he earned both his master’s degree and PhD. His doctoral research focused on Atatürk ’s revolution, inkılap, and its cultural and socio-political impact. Subsequently, his research has centred on topics such as elite formations, identity policies, and nation-building in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey. In his differing roles as a postdoctoral researcher and external lecturer, he taught courses in nationalism, theories of modernity, and the history of the Ottoman Empire and contemporary Turkey.