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THE TURKISH LANGUAGE REFORM The Turkish Language Reform A Catastrophic Success GEOFFREY LEWIS OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Great Clarendon Street, Oxford 0x2 6DP Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogotâ Buenos Aires Calcutta Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi Paris Sâo Paulo Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto Warsaw and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Geoffrey Lewis 1999 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 1999 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organizations. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Lewis, Geoffrey L. The Turkish language reform: a catastrophic success / Geoffrey Lewis, p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ). 1. Turkish language—Reform. 2. Turkish language—History. I. Title. PL115.L47 1999 494/35—dc2i 99-24289 ISBN 0-19-823856-8 13579 10 8 6 42 Typeset by Best-set Typesetter Ltd., Hong Kong Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Bookcraft (BathJJ^fiUJ^idsomer Norton Acknowledgements To all the many friends who supplied me with material, my deep gratitude. Most of them said that if I criticized the language reform too harshly they would not mind a bit. My especial thanks to Fuat M. Andic, Emre Aracı, Çiğdem Balım, Ruth Davis, Sıtkı Egeli, Şükrü Elçin, Selim İlkin, Iverach McDonald, Andrew Mango, Bengisu Rona, and Ali Suat Ürgüplü. Contents Abbreviations viii Note on the Text ix ι. Introduction ι 2. Ottoman Turkish 5 3. The New Alphabet 27 4. Atatürk and the Language Reform until 1936 40 5. The Sun-Language Theory and After 57 6. Atay, Ataç, Sayılı 75 7. Ingredients 94 8. Concoctions 107 9. Technical Terms 124 10. The New Yoke 133 11. The New Turkish 140 12. What Happened to the Language Society 153 References 169 General Index 177 Index of Words, Phrases, and Suffixes 183 Abbreviations [A] Arabic ATD Atatürk ve Türk Dili (Ankara: TDK, 1963) AKDTYK Atatürk Kültür, Dil ve Tarih Yüksek Kurumu AÜDTC Ankara Üniversitesi Dil Tarih-Coğrafya Fakültesi DLT Diwän Lugät al-Turk [F] French [G] Greek JRAS Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of London [M] Mongolian OT Old Turkic [P] Persian TBMM Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi TDK Türk Dil Kurumu TDTC Türk Dili Tetkik Cemiyeti TL Türk Lirası (Turkish lira) TTK Türk Tarih Kurumu