The second constitutional period of the Ottoman Empire and the early decades of the Turkish republic were a hotbed of new and competing ideas which were to dramatically shape the development of the modern nation that followed. This book includes translations of and introductions to some of the key Turkish writers of the age, including Namik Kemal, Ziya Gökalp, Abdullah Cevdet and Ahmed Riza.

The writings of these Turkist, Westernist and Islamist Ottoman and early republican thinkers are presented with contextualizing introductions which allow readers to access the primary texts which show the Turkish intellectual milieu out of which Mustafa Kemal's ideas were to emerge and ultimately dominate and will be of interest to students and scholars of Ottoman and Turkish History.