This research analyzes the dissident intellectual reactions towards the secular-nationalist modernization project of the Kemalist regime in Turkey. Shortly after monopolizing power in the mid-1920s, the Kemalist regime established a strong hegemony with a solid support base, primarily the urban educated strata and the intelligentsia. Yet despite its hegemony, the Kemalist regime drew significant criticisms from a viable segment of progressive intellectuals. Drawing on political and social theories of Antonio Gramsci and ?erif Mardin, I argue that dissident intellectuals constituted a significant intellectual challenge against the Kemalist project by producing alternative, counter-hegemonic, progressive narratives. Moreover, unlike the Kurdish or Islamist opposition to the regime, the dissident intellectuals appealed to the same social strata from which the Kemalists drew support. I rely primarily on the works of Sabahattin Ali, Naz?m Hikmet, Sabiha Sertel, and Orhan Kemal, aiming to understand how they understood political and economic independence, social transformation, and socioeconomic development. Furthermore, I explore their interactions with the state apparatus to understand how intellectual-regime relations ultimately influenced hegemonic struggles in Turkey. I show that dissident progressive intellectuals’ interaction with the regime and their challenge to its hegemony signaled the attitude of consequent Turkish governments towards the progressive intelligentsia. Even though they did not aim to take over the state apparatus and posed no direct challenge against the state authority, the regime understood and treated the dissident intellectuals as a security issue. While ultimately unsuccessful in breaking the Kemalist hegemony and effectively repressed by the state, dissident intellectuals had significant influences in Turkey’s intellectual history. They influenced the intellectual and social opposition against the Democrat Party government in the late 1950s. Moreover, they left ideological – though not strategic – blueprints for Turkey’s post-1960 progressive movements. Ultimately, my research on dissident progressive intellectuals contributes to Turkish intellectual and social histories. Furthermore, I add to contemporary debates, academic and public, on the relations between intellectuals and authoritarian regimes, and on alternative, counter-hegemonic models constituted by the intelligentsia.