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Claiming that “the Turk has acquired all his present vices from the East” and that “had he entered Europe instead of the south, and had he settled in the west, like his Hungarian brethren, he would now have outstanding governance, and prosperity,”43 the journal’s publishers clearly sought to drive a wedge between the Turkish national narrative and the Islamic one. Moreover, they made the alleged natural proclivity of the Turks for modernism – a trait lacking in all other groups of the Orient44 – into a central pillar of Turkism.

The principal line of demarcation was that between culture and politics: Turkism on the cultural level flourished, while Turkism as a political programme was stifled. On the political level, the organisation made a conscious effort to push the Turkism burgeoning in its ranks into the background and to erect a façade of Ottomanism reminiscent of the early Tanzimat ideology. The new doctrine placed renewed emphasis on the ideal of “equality” among Ottomans. 73 The decision to make Macedonia the centre of CPU revolutionary activity reinforced the opportunistic motivations behind this policy.

15 In June 1919 Mahmut Esat and ¡ükrü Saraçoºlu traveled secretly from Switzerland to Anatolia to engage in the guerilla war against the Allies in the region of Izmir. 16 After the inauguration of the Turkish National Assembly in Ankara in April 1920, Mustafa Kemal called the ambitious young jurist to Ankara. In 1922, at the age of 30, he was made Minister of Economy, and in 1924 he became Minister of Justice. 24 Turkey Beyond Nationalism A Minister in the young nation state Mahmut Esat returned to Asia Minor in 1919 as the bearer of a revolutionary national project.