ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the brief historical account of the late Ottoman Empire and the first steps toward the founding of the Republic of Turkey with a particular focus on the question of belonging to the state. While the institutional structure of political belonging to the state was designed on the hierarchy between the ruling Muslim millet and the ruled non-Muslim millets under the millet system, Ottoman nationhood—which was initially introduced in the Reform Edict of 1856 and later deepened with the Nationality Law of 1869 and the first Ottoman constitution in 1876—sought to overcome the hierarchical notion of the millet system by establishing an overarching Ottoman identity that would exceed and cut across any particularistic ethnic belonging, such as Jews, Armenians, Greeks, Arabs, and Kurds. However, after World War I, the transition from Ottomanism to monolithic Turkishness became the dominant national policy by the state elites.
