Today is the 91st anniversary of the founding of the Republic of Turkey. Following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the founders of the new Republic, led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and the countless other heroes of the Turkish War of Independence, established a new state on the mainland of Anatolia. The guiding principle of the new state was and remains the rule of the people by the people. Its slogan, displayed on the wall of the Turkish Grand National Assembly, captures this principle in a dramatic fashion: "Sovereignty belongs to the nation alone."One of the most enduring debates about the Turkish Republic concerns this single word "nation" and what it means for the nature and character of the state. Ninety-one years later, the citizens of Turkey are still contemplating this question. There is a simple yet profound reason for this. "Nation" defines the state, not the other way around. It is the state that serves the people. The needs and aspirations of a nation give legitimacy and direction to the state. But we know that this is true mostly in theory. The history of modern nation-states points to a different experience whereby the state defined what a nation is and should be. Most of the national identities that we associate with modern states such as France or Germany have in fact come about as a result of the creation of nation-states in the aftermath of the French Revolution. This experience of European nation-states has been more or less repeated in the founding of the Turkish Republic.This has complicated the concept of the nation in the new Turkish state. The founding fathers of the Turkish Republic fought a heroic war of independence against European imperialism. But they also fought a bitter war of ideas and ideals among themselves. The question was how the new state was going to be shaped once the homeland was liberated from the occupation forces.The new Republic faced the same dilemma of all non-European nations that fought against European imperialism in the 19th and early 20th century - while liberating their countries from the various European countries, they implemented programs of modernization that made them dependent on a Euro-centric concept of political and economic order at the regional and global level. They wanted to be Europeanized culturally with the hope that they would be accepted into the club of "civilized nations." Atatürk famously called it "taking the nation to the level of modern civilization."This was a survival strategy as much as a choice of ideology. In order to find a place for itself in the new order of the world, the Turkish Republic felt that it had to assimilate into the political, economic and cultural codes of the emerging global order. This meant introducing radical reforms at home, redefining Turkey's strategic location in the region and forming new alliances with European powers. In some ways, this strategy paid off and saved the young Republic from new assaults from European imperialist adventures. But it also created problems at home. The state became the main actor and conduit of modernization. Republican elites gave a new definition of the Turkish nation and disregarded the centuries-old experience of cultural diversity and religious co-habitation that underlined the social and cultural life of the Seljuk and Ottoman Empires. The non-Turkish and non-Muslim citizens of the Republic suddenly faced the choice of becoming ethno-secular Turks as defined by the state or accept marginalization, disenfranchisement and assimilation. Kurds, Armenians, Greeks, Arabs, Jews and others were forced to hide their identities because they did not fit the new homogenous definition of the nation, which meant the collective identity of a people that is Turk by ethnicity and secular by choice. As for the devout, they were also the spoilers of the new nation-state ideology and had to be pushed to the margins.It is not a coincidence that Republican elites feared two things the most: religion and ethnicity. For them, religion meant "dogmatism and fundamentalism" and contradicted the new secular goals of the Republic. Any ethnic identity other than Turkish posed the threat of "separatism." Both had to be under state control. It is only recently that the non-Turkish and non-Muslim citizens of Turkey have been able to express themselves more openly and without fear. If the primary purpose of a republic as a political order is to serve the people and establish the principle of justice, as Plato elaborated on in "The Republic," then the people or the nation and what it embodies should define the main parameters of the republic.This is what is happening in Turkey at the moment. The old homogenous and static definition of the nation and the political order is being replaced by a dynamic, multicultural and multi-religious notion of the nation that is in peace with the historical experience of the citizens of the Turkish Republic on the one hand and open to the world on the other. Striking a proper balance between historical rootedness and openness to the world is what will ensure the strength and continuity of the Republic.