This chapter discusses the principle aim of the Kemalist nation-building project: the construction of Homo LASTus. Understood here as a Weberian ideal type, Homo LASTus refers to a new human being who is at once a laicist, Atatürkist (Kemalist), Sunni Muslim and Turk. Having determined, ethnic religious heterogeneity, Islamism and the Ottoman nostalgia as existential threats to the new secularist and Turkish nationalist state and national identity, the Kemalists were adamant to create a secular nation out of the country’s majority that happened to be Sunni Muslim and Turkish. After summarising Kemalist nation-building and its relations with Islam and minorities, the chapter briefly elaborates on the social engineering policies of the Kemalists and their securitisation of minority identities. It explains how the Kemalist state marginalised, securitised and even in some cases criminalised ethnoreligious and political minorities as well as religious Muslims; and the state’s assimilation and dissimilation policies in relation to these minorities. After discussing each parameter (Laicist, Atatürkist, Sunni Muslim, and Turk) in a separate section, this chapter discusses how the Kemalists created and made use of Atatürk’s personality cult in addition to education in creating their desired citizens.

This chapter analyses what happened to the undesired citizens of the Kemalism during the Kemalist nation-building project. The ‘other’ to the state’s desired citizen of Homo LASTus were practising Muslims, Islamists, non-Atatürkists such as leftists and socialists, non-Muslims, Alevis and Kurds who were discriminated against by the Kemalist state in a variety of ways. Not only were attempts made to assimilate or dissimilate them, but they were also denied important bureaucratic positions, despite officially being ‘equal citizens'.The chapter looks at the ‘others’ to the Homo LASTus in order: practising Muslims and Islamists (opposite to the laicist), leftists–socialists–communists (opposite to the Atatürkist), non-Muslims and Alevis (opposite to the Sunni Muslim) and Kurds (opposite to the Turk). Before concluding, the chapter discusses how, for a variety of reasons, these minorities felt a need to hide their identities in public, resorted to dissimulation and were constructed by the majority as villains in different conspiracy theories linked to the insecurities, anxieties, fears and paranoias of the state and the nation.

This chapter analyses how the state, under the rule of Erdoğanists, has been treating undesired citizen identity groups. In post-coup-attempt Turkey, the AKP has developed a staunchly populist narrative to divide the citizens of Turkey as factions of 'the people’ (or ‘the nation’) versus its out-groups: Kemalists, White Turks, Kurds, Alevis, Gülenists, leftists, liberals, etc. who are framed as citizen-enemies. All of these groups have been constructed as terrorists – internal enemies of the nation and pawns of Western powers that do not want Turkey to lead the Muslim world. The chapter starts with the most significant and oldest antagonists of Islamists – Erdoğanists – who arethe Kemalists and their desired citizens –the Homo LASTus – and also the non-Kemalist White Turks and secular elites who allegedly victimised Islamists in the past and who are allegedly stillplotting against them. Then, following the same order of the chapter on Kemalism’s undesired citizens, this chapter will discuss other undesired citizens of Erdoğanism: disloyal practising Muslims and Islamists; leftists, liberals, socialists; non-Muslims; Alevis; and disloyal Kurds.