How a single alphabet reform slammed the door on a thousand-year history

Cultures · Published 30 September 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: In 1928, Turkey underwent a radical linguistic transformation. By replacing the Arabic script with a modified Latin alphabet, the nation didn't just change how it wrote; it fundamentally reoriented its cultural identity, severing ties with the Ottoman past to align with Western civilization.

For over a millennium, Ottoman Turkish utilized a version of the Arabic script. While this system effectively preserved the etymological roots of Arabic and Persian loanwords, it struggled with the phonetic needs of the Turkish language. Because Arabic is consonant-heavy and Turkish is vowel-rich, readers often had to rely on context to distinguish between words. This complexity created a steep learning curve, where specialized literary speech was often restricted to scholarly circles.

The transition to the modern 29-letter Latin script was a personal initiative of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Following the consolidation of power, Atatürk established a Language Commission to adapt the Latin script to Turkish phonemes. Although the commission initially proposed a five-year transition, Atatürk accelerated the timeline to just three months. The new alphabet, formalized by law in November 1928, introduced specific modifications—such as the letters Ç, Ğ, İ, Ö, Ş, and Ü—to ensure high phonetic accuracy.

The reform was deeply ideological. While some saw it as a practical way to increase literacy—which surged from roughly 10% to over 90%—the shift was also a tool for nationalistic engineering. By 'cleansing' the language of its Arabic roots, reformers aimed to promote a modern Turkish identity distinct from the wider Islamic world. This linguistic pivot was so effective that it served as a model for other Turkic languages, including Azerbaijani in 1991 and Kazakh in 2021. Even today, the 'Turkish-I problem'—the distinction between the dotted 'İ' and dotless 'I'—remains a famous challenge in software development.

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