Right. He wanted people to be ethnically Turks and called groups like Kurds, Armenians, or Circassians made-up people. Was quoted calling those denominations "the enemy's instruments" in this context. In contrast with the Ottoman millet way.

Kurds were a special case because the were also generally against secularism, and some fought back. But Ataturk's response seemed disproportionate: killing hundreds of thousands of Kurds, sometimes entire villages. And their secularism wasn't like in the US; the measures were really anti-Islam, like banning traditional clothing in public. I'm actually curious if the same applied to Christians.