Abstract:

The idea of ​​building a modern state in the Ottoman Empire has a comprehensive content with the Tanzimat. Together with the Tanzimat, a change of political, administrative, legal, economic and socio-cultural structures within the modern state paradigm was envisaged. In this period, arrangements were made in order to establish a strong central state, to integrate many different elements in this axis and to establish a citizenship identity, and administrative and legal instruments binding the provincial center were built. The Unionist actors in the Constitutional Monarchy period continued this idea effectively and tried to use the policies and tools that create national identity effectively. The founding actors of the early Republican period have made extensive reforms in the context of the modern state, and the modern nation state has radically built the founding instruments. In this period, centralism, secularism, populism and national identity were important dynamics for a strong modern state. This paper tries to discuss the construction process of modern state from Tanzimat to Early Republic through a political, institutional, legal and social perspective and points of continuity and rupture. Periodically, the reforms that shape the modern state philosophy / paradigm have been tried to be discussed through different dynamics.

Keywords: