ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the nation-state in the period from 1923 to the 1960's, to track the state's policy concerning the management of diversity from a political and legal perspective. The emergence of Turkish nationalism as a systematic political ideology in the early Republican period is attributed by Aktar to the statelite's adherence to it and to the international conditions at the time. Indeed, state officials and many commentators have interpreted the possibility of being accepted into Turkishness as evidence of its civic and 'legalist-voluntarist' nature. Nationalist Turkey has given all facilities to the Turkish citizen defined by the constitution of being a patriotic Turkish nationalist. The cultural, social and economic life of the country had not significantly changed even after the population exchange with Greece, since there was still a considerable non-Muslim minority population who held economic power, especially in the main cities.
