The Ottoman Turkish debate

Over the past week, pundits and politicians have engaged in a heated debate about the proposed introduction of Ottoman Turkish courses into the high school curriculum. Education has traditionally been a popular topic in the national conversation, yet the Ottoman Turkish discussion has attracted unusual attention from public figures. "President Erdoğan's actual goal is to institute the Arabic script in Turkey," Republican People's Party (CHP) whip Akif Hamzacebi argued. Meanwhile, Ceyda Karan, a pro-opposition journalist, suggested that "their ultimate goal is to reverse the alphabet reform." Others responded even more passionately: Selahattin Demirtaş, who leads the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), threatened that "your entire army cannot force my daughter to take the Ottoman language course." Outspoken parliamentarian Hüseyin Aygün echoed the same sentiment: "I will not have them teach my child Ottoman or Arabic." By all counts, the Ottoman Turkish debate has rapidly moved beyond the domain of education policy and came to represent the latest battleground between conservative revisionism and secularist loyalism.

In his detailed work on the abolishment of Ottoman Turkish in the mid-1920s, historian Geoffrey Lewis famously calls the Turkish language reform "a catastrophic success." The adoption of the Latin alphabet had certain benefits that its advocates frequently highlight in public debates: First and foremost, the abolishment of the Ottoman alphabet rendered the language more precise and made it possible to avoid complications between different words spelled in exactly the same way - such as Bosnia (Bosna) and "this year" ("bu sene"). Furthermore, proponents passionately argue that the Latin script is easier to learn than its predecessor - an argument often supported with references to the literacy rate in the early 1900s even though the difference between today and a century ago is remarkable around the globe, including in countries that did not change their alphabet. The single most important function of the language reform, however, was that it allowed the newly established Republic to burn bridges with the Orient, to sweep unpleasant memories under the rug and to facilitate the nation's top-down integration into the Western (read "civilized") world.

Leaving ideologically charged objections aside, skeptics who complain about the shortcomings of Turkey's education system in the area of foreign language instruction are completely right. In its current condition, Turkish schools are largely unable to teach English and other foreign languages and, considering that the country desperately needs more English speakers, this is a pressing issue. The fact that Turkish schools have certain problems, however, does not warrant wholesale objections.

Turkey, furthermore, could seriously benefit from familiarizing teenagers with non-Latin scripts considering that the country suffers from a major shortage of Arabic speakers. Mastering the Persian alphabet at an early age would render the nation's youth more capable of learning various eastern languages including Arabic, Persian and Kurdish among others. More important, the accessibility of Ottoman Turkish would make major contributions to the nation's understanding of itself as well shed light on the most controversial aspects of Ottoman Turkish history.