The article discusses causes of identity crises among individuals and vari­ous ethnic and confessional groups in Modern Turkey, as well as the fun­da­men­tal role of Sunnism in ethno-national identity of Anatolian Turks. Itanalyzesthe «Turkculuk», aprocess to introduce and construct Turkish ethnic identity for the Turks themselves and in combination with Turkification of the entire Muslim population of Turkey, planned by Mustafa Kemal in 1919. 

The sources suggest that at the beginning of 20th century there weren’t many «Turks» with Turkish identity in the Ottoman Empire, while the Turkish eth­nic identity was not formed at all. In the political process of rapid ethnicity construction of Turks and Turkification of other Muslim groups, «Turkish iden­tity» was self-determinedbased on Sunnism, the main shared culture among the swallowed groups. Ethno-Turkification of Sunnism gradually set free Kurdish identity from dominant Sunnism, and from 1980s put «Ethnically Kurdish» on the first level on a vertical «first Kurdish, then Sunni», thus freeing space for other ethno-religious groups to search for their lost identities or to restore the forbidden ones.