Kemalism

Kemalism (Turkish: Kemalizm, also archaically Kamâlizm) or Atatürkism (Atatürkçülük) is a political ideology based on the ideas of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder and first president of Turkey. Its symbol is the Six Arrows (Altı Ok).

Turkey during the Atatürk era was defined by sweeping political, social, cultural, and religious reforms designed to separate the Republican state from its Ottoman predecessor and embrace a Western lifestyle, including the establishment of secularism/laicism, state support of the sciences, gender equality, economic statism, and more. Most of those policies were first introduced to and implemented in Turkey during Atatürk's presidency through his reforms.

Origins

Various reforms to avoid the imminent collapse of the Empire, began chiefly in the 19th-century Tanzimat reforms. The mid-century Young Ottomans attempted to create the ideology of Ottoman nationalism, or Ottomanism, to quell the rising ethnic nationalism in the Empire and introduce limited democracy for the first time while maintaining Islamist influences. With their demise under Sultan Abdul Hamid II's absolutist reign, in the early 20th century the Young Turks picked up their legacy. Atatürk's formative years were spent in Hamidian Salonica. During his time in the army, he joined the Committee of Union and Progress, which was agitating for constitutionalism against Hamidian absolutism, and abandoned Ottoman nationalism in favour of Turkish nationalism, while adopting a secular political outlook.

Atatürk was not in a position to play a major role in the Young Turk Revolution of 1908, which reinstated the constitution, though he was a key player in the deposition of Abdul Hamid during the 31 March Incident.