The modern nationalist thought created by the French Revolution has created various turning points in world history. From the end of the 18th century to the beginning of the 20th century, the political and social balances of multinational empires were deeply shaken by entering the domain of this thought. The Ottoman Empire, a multinational empire, adopted the European lifestyle with the Tanzimat process that it initiated to maintain its existence, approached the Western civilization and tried to redesign its institutions with the values of Western civilization. Namık Kemal is an important thinker who lived in the renewal process of the Ottoman Empire. He used art for the westernization of society and preferred to write his works in a plain languange that the public would understand. He sought solutions to these problems by shedding light on the social and political issues of his time in his writings. The influence of Namık Kemal, who is accepted as the person who introduced the concepts of ‘’right, freedom, homeland and nation’’ into Turkish thought and literature, exceeded his time. He influenced the leading names of the National Struggle Period with his ideas. During the Republic period, he was preffered to as the poet of ‘’Fatherland and Freedom’’ as a source of inspiration for intellectual world of many intellectuals and patriots.