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, moved to Denmark at the age of ten, where he have resided since. He have studied history, philosophy, and Middle Eastern studies at the University of Copenhagen, where he also received my master’s degree and PhD. Since obtaining my PhD, he have worked as a research assistant, postdoc, part-time lecturer and assistant professor. He have worked extensively on Ottoman-Turkish modernization, and have published a book on the Atatürk revolution (Aarhus University Press, 2014).