A Sociology of Cleansing. Ziya Gökalp (1876–1924) and the Foundation of Ethno-Religious Nationalism in the Late Ottoman Empire

Abstract This article, which is based on the reading of a large number of writings by Ziya Gökalp, describes comprehensively the intellectual evolution of this major thinker of the end of the Ottoman Empire and the beginning of the Republic of Turkey. In the context of the transition from empire to nation state, Gökalp developed a sociological thought closely correlated with the political developments of his time. Without being a mere propagandist for the Committee of Union and Progress, his way of translating and adapting the sources of his thought reveals its political leanings towards a society cleansed of its religious and ethnic minorities.