Banu Turnaoğlu, Te Intellectual Origins of Turkish Radical Republicanism In: Radical Republicanism: Recovering the Tradition’s Popular Heritage. Edited by: Bruno Leipold, Karma Nabulsi, and Stuart White, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198796725.003.0010 9 Te Intellectual Origins of Turkish Radical Republicanism Banu Turnaoğlu Turkish republicanism has a famously radical heritage that continues to loom large in the tradition today, but no systematic inquiry into its roots and evolution has yet been undertaken. Tis chapter traces the intellectual origins of radical republicanism in Turkey back to the political thought of the radical branch of the Young Ottomans in the 1860s. Like most radical republican movements in Europe at that time, the Young Ottoman radicals were a group of like-minded writers and journalists who placed the republican values of liberty, equality, and fraternity at the heart of their agenda, and conceived this republican philosophy not merely as a national project but as an international one. Tis chapter analyses Young Ottoman radical republicans’ involvement in revolutionary underground movements and their engagement with the European radical ideas of their time. It also tracks the emergence of their strategy favouring violence as a means of fulflling revolutionary ends to transform society and polit- ical structures. Young Ottoman radicals sought to make sense of political situ- ations, evaluate institutions and policies, and guide political action as a response to what they saw as arbitrary power and oppression both at home and abroad. Te press was their chief tool for transmitting their philosophy and their prime means of communication with the Ottoman public. Young Ottoman radicals did not remain aloof from the social changes and rising inequalities of the nineteenth century, and they oriented themselves towards the social ills both of Europe and their own coun- try, seeking practical solutions. As the twentieth century dawned, radical republican- ism shed some of its layers and adopted certain new conceptions, transforming itself and evolving into ‘Kemalism’, the founding ideology of the Turkish Republic, named afer its frst president Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Tis ideology retains a signifcant liv- ing presence in contemporary Turkish social and political life. Te recovery or reclaiming of the forgotten radical branch of the Young Ottoman movement by revisiting their achievements will encourage us to rethink the alternative meanings and interpretations of republicanism. Tese republican strands have been neglected in contemporary debates on radical republicanism, which tend to take Western Europe alone as their sphere of reference. Tis chapter