Türk Ocakları in the nation state process

The state is a deep-rooted social and political structure that has existed on earth for thousands of years. The concept of state has been defined in different ways on an intellectual ground and in different periods since Ancient Greece. Especially with the reform movements in Europe and the Age of Enlightenment, the concept of state started to gain a secular character. Thus, political thought changed direction and the institutional and ideological foundations of the nation state were formed. With the French Revolution, the source of sovereignty, citizenship rights and the definition of the state changed. From the 19th century onwards, the Ottoman Empire entered a process of modernisation under the influence of the French Revolution along with territorial losses, wars and economic problems. The centralist and modernisation-oriented reforms that started with the Tanzimat and Constitutional Monarchy periods in the Ottoman Empire ensured the structural transformation of the state. In this period, intellectual movements, presspublication activities and modernisation in the Ottoman Empire laid both intellectual and institutional foundations. In 1912, the Turk Ocakları were established as an organised expression of this process. Since its foundation, the Turk Ocağı have played an active role in areas such as strengthening national identity, educating the public, language unity, publishing activities and raising civic awareness. In addition, during the period of the National Struggle, with the support of Atatürk, the Türk Ocakları ensured the interaction between the state and the people. Thus, in this study, the theories of the state, the thinkers who contributed to the development of these theories and the historical process are discussed together. In this direction, which structural transformations were experienced in the understanding of the state during the transition from the Ottoman Empire to the Republic? The intellectual movements that emerged in the last period of the Ottoman Empire, the activities of the Türk Ocakları in the Ottoman Empire, the role of the Turk Ocağı in the construction of the nation-state in the early Republican period through the contributions of the Turk Ocakları in the ideological and cultural process are discussed.