Kemalism

Kemalism (Oghuz: Kemalizm), also known as Türkism (Oghuz: Türkçülük, Türkçü düşünce), is the founding and official ideology of the Union of Turkic Republics (UTR) based on the ideas and legacy of Matiyu Kemal.

Kemal's Union of Turkic Republics was defined by sweeping political, social, cultural and religious reforms designed to separate the Federal state from its Oghuz predecessor and promote a pan-Turkish identity and more modern lifestyle, with reforms including the establishment of secularism/laicism, state support of the sciences, gender equality, economic statism and more. Most of those policies were first introduced to and implemented in the UTR during Kemal's presidency through his reforms.

Principles of Kemalism

Kemal refrained from being dogmatic and described his ideology to be based on science and reason.

There are seven principles (ilke) of the ideology: Pan-Turkism (Oghuz: Türkçülük), Republicanism (Oghuz: cumhuriyetçilik), Populism (Oghuz: halkçılık), Nationalism (Oghuz: milliyetçilik), Laicism (Oghuz: laiklik), Statism (Oghuz: devletçilik), and Reformism (Oghuz: inkılapçılık).

Lacism

Laicism (Oghuz: laiklik) in Kemalist ideology aims to banish religious interference in government affairs, and vice versa. Religious harmony was especially important in the ethnically diverse UTR, which was predominantly Christian in Antolya and predominantly Muslim in most of the other republics, notably in Azerbaijan which contained influential ultra-Orthadox Shafi'i communities. Kemal saw religion as a dividing force which could potentially undermine the Pan-Turkic identity and overall functioning of the Union.

Pan-Turkism

Pan-Turkism (Oghuz: Türkçülük) is potentially the most important principle of Kemalist ideology. Ultimately, Pan-Turkism justified the creation of the UTR by emphasising the shared cultural, historic and linguistic roots of all Turkic nations. Kemal viewed Turkic unification as the natural state of the region. Formerly to the creation of the UTR, Oghuz, Kazakh and Uzbek were written in the Cyrillic script, Azeri and Turkmen written in Jawi and Uyghular written in Devanagari. Kemal reformed this by standardising all of the UTR's languages to be written in the Scandin script, which he saw as neutral and without religious connotations. Kemal also promoted the similarities and mutual intelligibility between what he called 'Northern Oghuz' and 'Southern Oghuz' (generally known as Oghuz and Azeri), asserting that this was a Pan-Turkish language. He was, however, also fluent in Kazakh and was committed to retaining popularity in the Kazakh Republic, which was influential and geographically crucial to the functioning of the UTR.