Ottoman society, like many Arab societies today, was heavily inclined towards absolute rule by "strong men". Where most of Europe gradually weaned itself off of absolute rulers by gradually limiting or subverting the power of monarchs over several generations, Turkey literally went from absolute rule to democracy in a single generation. Kemal was an officer during the first world war, which Turkey was on the wrong side of and wound up being partitioned by the allied forces. He played a huge role in reunifying Turkey through armed conflict that expelled the occupying forces. The last Ottoman Sultan was opposed to Kemal and called for his death, but the unification forces instead abolished the sultanate and declared a democracy. Kemal was held in such esteem that he was easily elected to lead this new democracy.
Here's where things get interesting... Kemal's revolution and declaration of democracy are hardly novel. Many nations have undergone similar transformations, and many of the newly elected leaders soon turn into despots. Cultures that favor "strong men" tend to encourage this. Kemal introduced reforms intended to westernize Turkey. Western dress, even hats, were heavily encouraged while his "Hat Law" banned turban's and fezzes (No, the doctor would not have been a fan of Ataturk!).
The new alphabet, seen in light of this wave of westernization, is particularly interesting. Ankara, Istanbul, and many other Turkish cities are full of monuments covered in arabic scrip proclaiming the awesomeness of various Sultan's. It's not unlike how Washington D.C.'s Lincoln memorial, etc., glorify the U.S. system of government, only the Ottoman empire had been accumulating such monuments for a lot longer. The Sultan's of the Ottoman empire lived in the shadow of Constantinople's emperors, so they tended to play themselves up rather a lot.
If you tour Turkey today, your university educated tour guides (practically every guide in Turkey has a degree or two) are extremely unlikely to be able to read a word of arabic script. The new alphabet effectively severed Turkish citizens from centuries of extremely high quality propaganda that the Ottoman empire had accumulated to support the sultanate's rule.
Kemal's legacy is not without it's dark spots, but the "strong man" culture of the Ottoman empire has largely abated. Obviously, it takes time, as people change slowly. Turkish citizens today are more likely to revere Kemal himself as they would a Sultan rather than their prime minister or president. The military has historically seen itself as the guardian of Ataturk's legacy, which has led to some truly unusual coups that, bizarrely enough, have probably kept Turkey on the course of democracy, although recently the power of the military has been gutted.
The Turkish alphabet might be interpreted by some as a form of oppression, but it's adoption was more about breaking with the past and embracing democracy and the west. Compared to it's Arab neighbors, Turkey is astoundingly western and unusually democratic.
Your comment was otherwise well-written, but you misused apostrophes nine times (thrice in the first three sentences), which made it quite painful to read. I'm sure that your writing will be taken much more seriously if you fix this one glitch.
Maybe that was the primary motivation, but Turkey has also been unusually brutal about trying to force minorities to embrace Turkish culture.
As I've mentioned elsewhere, I used to know a Turkish journalist that was forced to flee after repeated death threats from the regime because he wrote about the problems the Kurds ran into. These problems ran from not being allowed to even call themselves Kurds for a long time - the regime insisted no such thing as Kurds existed. They were not allowed (and still isn't other than in private schools) to learn their own language in school. Along with a huge range of other restrictions.
That makes it hard to ignore the effect of the alphabet restrictions as yet another part of the cultural oppression.
I'm a German-born Turk who lives in Germany (Berlin) and I don't have a problem that I had to learn German at school. For me, it's self-explanatory that I have to learn German sooner or later if I plan to live in Germany. It's the same case for everyone who prefers to work and live in a foreign country.
Ottomans started talking about having a constitutional monarchy in early 19th century and first constitutional government officially started in 1876. However this was short lived and constitution changed 2 years later to weaken the parliament. Second constitutional era starts in 1908 and ends with the collapse of the empire. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chamber_of_Deputies_(Ottoman_Em...
So first steps of a republic was already in place before Ataturk was even born, democracy was the natural choice for the new Turkey.
Sorry but I found most of the other claims you say rather bizarre as well..
It is like letters ç,ğ,ü being illegal in US.
If you wanted a local company, yes, you were only allowed to use Turkish letters in the official name. They didn't actually care what you actually wrote on your signs though.
Official names being Turkish is important because otherwise officials would have needed to be capable of working with all characters in the universe.
Wow.
I've always thought it awfully pragmatic that the Finnish word for "getting married" is literally "to go and fuck together".
http://www.nouvelle-europe.eu/en/polish-national-minority-li...
Btw, I am also not allowed to use Cyrillic alphabet or latin "ć" here in Germany when filling out official forms, but I don't consider that my rights are somehow jeopardized because of that.
Since I assume you're Serbian (your handle + the mention of ć and Cyrillic), here's an example.
Imagine that the Hungarians in North of Serbia weren't allowed to write their name as Szabo Lajos (or Lajos Szabo) and instead they were forced to use Lajoš Sabić.
Both Turkish Q and F keyboard layouts have Q, W and X on them. Everyone uses them all the time, always. You can't use them in your official company name, but that's usually not your publicly visible brand name anyway. E.g. "Biletix", a ticketing company (it was acquired by ticketmaster, but it was called that before the acquisition) http://www.biletix.com/anasayfa/TURKIYE/tr
I don't think the article itself is shooting for this, but the current AKP government is trying to spin this inane and pointless change as "democratization". If they want to democratize things and appeal to oppressed minorities, they can start by taking thought criminals out of prison.
Probably water conservation, as it prevents sprinkler use. My city had a similar bylaw as recently as 10 years ago, until a new reservoir was built.
I used to know a Turkish journalist who was granted political asylum in Norway (one of many Turks who had to flee over issues like this) after repeated death-threats from the then-Turkish regime (early 90's) because he wrote articles about the situation of the Kurds.
E.g. "Minorities and Nationalism in Turkish Law", by Derya Bayir repeats the claim that the Law on the Turkish Alphabet of 1928 "obliged the use of the Turkish alphabet", as part of a section describing legal decisions used to outlaw use of Kurdish and other languages in official communication, and that has also been used to oust elected officials that have allowed use of other languages than Turkish.
In private there has been more flexibility, though until recently, everything I've found (including the book above) indicates there were strict restrictions on use by e.g. private businesses when communicating privately with customers too.
If you have references that contradicts the above mentioned book on these points, I'd love to see them.
EDIT: While the Google Translate translation of the text of the law itself here is atrocious at best, it does seem to also support the linked article: http://www.idealhukuk.com/hukuk/hukuk.asp?mct=mevzuatdetay&x...
Let's check English version of that: https://twitter.com/AKGenclikGM_en/status/384649333884588032 "Kurdish letters are now free"
..there is no ban for usage of Kurdish letters in public. As i said, because of Q, W, X letters are not in Turkish alphabet, they're just don't allowed to use these letters in names. They just added q - w - x to Turkish alphabet (btw think about it; USA changing their alphabet, adding another letters, i think general reaction would like "what") That's why they just write "q - w - x are free" in Turkish version. But in English version, sadly, they're saying kurds can't use their alphabets and they're dramatizing the status of kurds.
Think that legislation like USA's alphabet. They didn't have Ğ, Ş, İ etc. in their alphabet so people/company names doesn't have these letters. Is that means Ğ, Ş, İ is forbidden? News like this for dramatize the status of kurds in Turkey :)
I posted a link to a copy of the text of the law in question. Maybe it's an inaccurate copy. Maybe it was repealed before it came into force. Maybe the translation is even more broken than it appears. Yet if so, it ought to be easy for the people that are so insistent that it was never illegal to find documentation, such as the real text of the law, a better translation, or documentation of its repeal. Yet none of that appears to be forthcoming, just a stream of examples of recent usage of the letters from after Turkish society started reforming, 50-60 years or so after the law in question was passed.
It's great if the problem has been rectified. But that is far away from claiming it never existed in the first place.
Secondly, this is not about having all things in their native language, but about the fact that in many situations using Kurdish will land you in prison, even when speaking to other people whose primary language is Kurdish.
Until recently, a political party that dared distribute material in Kurdish risked being banned from elections, and people involved risk going to prison.
And a 2010 report I linked to elsewhere points out that Turkish officials that dare to use Kurdish in official communication - even if in a Kurdish area, communicating with Kurds - risked prison just a few years ago.
None of that is the case in Germany. In fact, specifically to the Kurds, you will find quite a few Turkish Kurds in Germany who enjoy a lot more freedom to use and learn their language in ways that would at least until recently have put them at risk of prison in their ancestral homes in Turkey.
Further to your school example, it is well established that being given the opportunity to learn your primary home language well is critical to learning another language at school. As such, forcing kids that speak Kurdish at home to learn only Turkish at school places them at a severe disadvantage. If the goal is to give these kids a the best possible chance of getting good at Turkish, the best way of achieving that is to offer them training in Kurdish too.
I guess it comes down to how the minority group ended up where it is, and how one would define a "foreign country". If a group of people migrate voluntarily, the receiving country would have a legitimate expectation that they'd learn the language, and adopt at least some aspects of the dominant culture.
If a group is conquered (or enslaved), or through some accident of history ends up a minority, I personally don't believe they should be coerced into adopting the ways of the majority. It would be compounding an injustice.
I'm not sure where the Kurds fit in to this - did they really "choose" to live in modern Turkey, the way that Turks who migrated to Germany did?
You are absolutely right here. I was speaking only about an alphabet part of the problems, and why it is not practical. Forcing someone else to "translate" the name is completely other problem, which is much more severe. There is certainly a difference between writing István as Ištvan simply because it's how it's pronounced and the lack of á in alphabet and forcing him to call himself Ivan (or Stefan).
There are many offenders to this, like Greece, or Bulgaria, or China, which IIRC at one moment required its own citizens to have "westernized" names in their travel documents.
That really is quite a stretch. I'm imagining the absurdity of internet cafes all over Istanbul hiding their bootleg keyboards during a bust.
It's entirely anecdotal but I have Turkish relatives on one side of my family. They were allowed - encouraged - to learn English and French growing up, so the letters themselves certainly weren't illegal. There was no ban on newspapers or books written in other languages. However Turkish was the only officially recognized language in Turkey and Turkish, literally by definition, does not have those letters.
That is far beyond legal restrictions in most other countries in the world, and had the defacto effect of placing a lot of restrictions on communication in other languages.
If it hasn't been enforced for some time: Great. But it says nothing about the legality.
EDIT: Here's a document from the Council of Europe's website: European Commission against Racism and Intolerance - ECRI Report on Turkey (2010/2011): http://www.coe.int/t/dghl/monitoring/ecri/Country-by-country...
It indicates that teaching Kurdish and other minority languages in private schools was allowed from ca. 2002, and so presumably books such as the Kurdish/French textbook at the site you referenced would have been available from no later than then. It says nothing specifically about the alphabet, but that's much closer to a proper source regarding the legality in that it at least specifically cite legal changes that would have been rather meaningless if the teaching material would still remain illegal. This also fits great with the "idefix.com" website itself - the domain was registered in 2002 according to whois.
It of course still only addresses the issue of current legality, not your original claim that it was never illegal, which - unless you can show us that the Google Translate translation is flat out wrong, or that the purported text of the 1928 law I referenced earlier is fake, is directly contradicted by the law itself.
(At the same time, the report complains that as of writing in 2010, the use of Kurdish by public officials was still likely to result in prosecution - so there is certainly still a long way forward).
That said, the image you have posted is the sort of propaganda that I saw after 9/11.
As a matter of fact, the women participating in a parade are more disciplined than the women wearing burqa out of their own conviction.
