Mark Twain once famously remarked, ‘Citizenship is what makes a republic; monarchies can get along without it. The distinction appears salient in considering the Republic of Turkey and the Ottoman Empire that preceded it. The Ottoman model of governance and authority rested on a complex system of socio-ethnic and religious balances, where primary identities were religious and allegiance was to the sultan. New ideas of state–society relationships, including republicanism, the nation-state and the citizen, sweeping in from Europe in the nineteenth century imperilled the Ottoman model, ultimately leading to its collapse and fragmentation along ethnic lines. The Republic's founders in 1923 eagerly disposed of the moribund sultanate and reimagined the population as citizens, highlighting ‘unity of language, culture and ideal’ to cement the new polity.

Twain continued: ‘What keeps a republic on its legs is good citizenship.’ By this he meant that an active citizenry will ensure the proper functioning of the republic. This is not necessarily how things panned out in Turkey, where emphasis has always been on ensuring the authority of the state and outlining citizens’ duties rather than encouraging them to pursue their rights and liberties. From the outset, the parameters of citizenship were imposed, not negotiated. The Republic expected obedience and sought to entrench loyalty through ethnic unity. Article 88 of the first constitution (1924) decreed, ‘The people of Turkey regardless of religion and race would, in terms of citizenship, be considered Turkish.’ More carefully worded, but imparting essentially the same message, Article 66 of the 1982 constitution, written after the 1980 coup and still in place, states, ‘everyone connected to the Turkish state with ties of citizenship is a Turk’. This formulation, theoretically, is inclusive, granting citizenship of the nation-state to all, whether they be ethnically Turkish or otherwise. But in practice it has been understood – and enforced – as the co-option of all into Turkishness, thus citizenship is conflated with uniform subscription to Turkishness and no divergence will be countenanced. Turkish citizenship, as is the case with Turkish nationalism noted earlier, was acquisitive but simultaneously exclusive – it attempted to claim all for Turkishness, but it fiercely denounced those who refused to accept such a nomenclature.