Why you might be thinking that the Turkish identity is fictional is that Turkish identity developed later than many other European nationalities. Calling the Turkish identity a state project means Serbs, Croats, Ukrainians but especially Russian, Franks and Italians a state project as well. All of these nations, including Turks, united under a single umbrella with the help of philosophical ideas or political doctrines.

Lol. Turkish identity was never a state project. Ottomans adopted and spread Islam over Turkishness. Many Turks migrated to Balkans were already speaking Turkish, not any Native Anatolian language or Arabic. Between late 1800's and Balkan wars many of them were expelled to Anatolia, they faced the same situation after the Second World War.

About the Turkish identity, ''Turkish'' is not being Central Asian pastoralist or solely based on ethnicity. If it was based on ethnicity, Turks would have been separated like how Germany is today (Bavarian, Saxon etc.).

Turkish identity was started to be adopted by educated low-class in Constantinople by mid-late 1800's. Long before the Kemalist period. By the very early 1900's it was quickly adopted by many educated people in such Balkanian cities like Thessaloniki.

and then WWI came, it's not as simple as how I say, I know. Many Greeks and Armenians left the Anatolia or suffered from persecution, and Turks suffered from Armenian organizations in the East.

By the Turkish War of Independence, rural peasants still considered themselves as muslims rather than Turk. You can see this is in a novel book named ''Yaban''. During the war of Independence, some of Turkish-speaking peoples started to use the denonym Turk, as well as the Turkish-spekaing Karamanlides people in the Central Anatolia.

Post 1923 Kemalist revolutions made the identity widespread in the entire country. Turkish as an ethnicity and as a nationality were distinct and separated. For example, Greeks in Turkey, Kurds in the Southeast were ethnically non-Turkish but nationally Turkish. This comes from a civil nationalist idea, based on Ziya Gökalp's Turkist ideas (who was a Kurd in origin). After people started how to read and write, thanks to the latin alphabet and to be educated, they quickly adopted the identity of Turk, many of these people were ethnically Turkish already.

Post-WWII Turks directly adopted Turkness, for example, Communist Bulgaria. They were simply expelled out of their villages for being Turks, not muslims. When they arrived in Turkey, they were already recognized as Turks and recognized themselves in the same way.

Even today it isn't a state project, quite the opposite, Islamist in the head of the state are trying to embrace Islam over Turkness, trying to spread the idea of ''a Turk who is not a muslim is not a real Turk'' (or a western agent).

Finally, I'm gonna say my ideas. Turkish identity is not a real thing if a Turk denies their pre-Turkic Anatolian roots and Balkanian mixture. We have a great culture, original and also influenced by many other cultures, especially Eastern Roman Empire. A Turk is not defined by their religion, to me I am not a Christian, but I believe in Christianity, many Turks are atheists, many are alawites, many are sunni muslims, many are neo-Tengrists. Anyone who has this culture, the language, the denonym is ethnically Turk. Anyone who lives inside the Turkey, despite having a non-Turkish language, despite not being ethnically Turkish, they are welcomed, they are nationally a Turk, and they have the right to preserve their own ethnical identity and cultural elements and nobody can say anything against them.