A discernable intellectual lineage can also be traced between some of [Auguste] Comte’s followers in Paris and some influential figures in the early Turkih nationalist movements who were exiled during the last years of the nineteenth century. These exiles’ ideas worked their way into the ideological framework of the CUP, whose motto “Union and Progress” not unconditionally was directly influenced by Comtean positivism. These ideas were not entirely new in the Ottoman context, however. They were part of the Ottoman tanzimatist trend that promoted administrative reforms based on the techniques of Western science.
– Taha Parla & Andrew Davidson, Corporatist Ideology in Kemalist Turkey: Progress or Order?, Syracuse University Press, 2004.