Ziya Gökalp

Ziya Gökalp was a Turkish sociologist, writer, poet and politician, born in Diyarbakır in 1876, who is considered the father of Turkish nationalism. A chief ideologist of the Committee of Union and Progress, he drew on Émile Durkheim to reject Ottomanism and Islamism in favour of Turkish nationalism, advocated the Turkification of the Ottoman Empire and regarded Greeks, Armenians, Assyrians and Jews as an undesirable foreign body in the national state; many historians have suggested that his nationalism contributed to the Armenian genocide. Exiled to Malta from 1919 to 1921, he wrote The Principles of Turkism (1923), and his ideas shaped the reforms of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.