The founding fathers were divided between those who advocated the establishment of a form of parliamentary democracy and those who favored an authoritarian regime, deemed necessary for the implementation of reforms to modernize and Westernize the country. The latter faction, led by leader of the Independence War Mustafa Kemal Pasha (to later be given the surname Atatürk, "father of the Turks," in 1934) prevailed, and an authoritarian single party regime was instituted in 1925 following the Kurdish rebellion led by Sheikh Said.In the early 1930s, two sets of policies were developed to construct a modern and secular Turkish nation-state. One set of policies had to do with the nation's identity. These policies aimed at the assimilation of various ethnic and linguistic groups into one homogeneous Turkish nation that spoke the Turkish language, adhered to the Turkish culture and believed in the Sunni-Hanafi form of Islam represented and promoted by the state. Turkey's Kurds, who participated in the War of Independence against foreign invasion on the promise of recognition of cultural autonomy upon victory, have ever since resisted assimilation through rebellions that stretch over the history of the republic.
The second set of policies aimed at secularizing society. The entire legal system was secularized and all religious affairs were put under state control through the Directorate of Religious Affairs. The republican leadership, deeply influenced by the Western positivistic and materialistic philosophy of the times, strongly believed that religious (and particularly Islamic) thinking had to be replaced by scientific thinking if the new nation was to achieve modernization and progress. Since it was not possible to disestablish religion (Islam), which was also being used as part of homogenizing identity policies, it was put under state control and restrictions were introduced on religious freedoms, primarily in the form of the prohibition of the traditional Sufi brotherhoods that prevailed among the people. No religious minority was recognized other than the non-Muslim groups granted rights by the Lausanne Treaty concluded in 1923 at the end of the War of Independence. Regarding authoritarian secularism that denied even their existence as a guarantee against Sunni domination, the Alevis, the largest religious minority the country who adhere to a heterodox form of Islam, did not until the 1990s begin demanding official recognition of their faith.
The identity and secularism policies described above form the two basic pillars of what has come to be referred to as Kemalism, the official ideology of the Turkish state, which perhaps found its best expression in the Constitution adopted by the military regime that was in power between 1980 and 1983. Since the introduction of multi-party politics in 1950 and especially since the EU integration process that began in the mid-1990s, an understanding of Kemalism as essentially a commitment to the ideal modernization and Westernization of Turkey that will culminate in EU membership has come to take root among business and professional elites. A very rigid and authoritarian understanding of Kemalism, however, continues to prevail among the military and civilian bureaucracy, which uses its self-appointed guardianship role of the state ideology to protect its commanding position and privileges threatened by the increasing democratization and liberalization of the political system.
The rigid form of Kemalism that is dominant among the military, judicial and higher educational bureaucracies is the mother of all Turkey's problems. It is the major obstacle to consolidation of a liberal democratic regime on EU norms. It equates all manifestations of Islam as Islamism and all manifestations of Kurdish identity as separatism. Authoritarian policies that truly belong to a past century form the greatest threat to the economic welfare, political stability, "soft power" (as a model country for Muslim majority societies) and territorial integrity of Turkey today.
