Turkish alphabet reform

[1][page needed] Turks, since the 10th century, along with the adoption of Islam, also adapted the Arabic script to the Turkish phonology.

Over the following 900 years, both western (Ottoman) and eastern dialects of Turkish were written using a modified form of the Arabic script.

[7] During the Tanzimat period, Ahmed Cevdet Pasha suggested the need for a new writing system to represent sounds that could not be expressed with the Arabic script.

[8] In 1851, Münif Pasha stated that reading and writing with Arabic letters was difficult and that education could not be properly conducted, thus emphasizing the need for reform.

With the spread of telegraphy, a form of Turkish written in the Latin alphabet and according to French spelling became a part of daily life.

[12] During the Second Constitutional Era, efforts to define Turkish national identity independently from Islam gained traction, particularly among those close to the Committee of Union and Progress.

The idea of adapting the Latin script to Turkish was first proposed in the 1860s by Iranian Azerbaijani Mirza Fatali Akhundov.

In 1914, five unsigned articles published in the journal "Hürriyet-i Fikriye" by Kılıçzade Hakkı proposed the gradual adoption of Latin letters, arguing that this change was inevitable.

Named "Eças" and pronounced "esas" in French spelling, this newspaper was published on Saturdays by Zekeriya Sami Efendi, but only a few issues have survived to the present day.

[16] In September 1922, during a meeting attended by Istanbul press members, Hüseyin Cahit Yalçın asked Atatürk why they did not accept the Latin script.

[17] On 28 May 1928, the Grand National Assembly of Turkey passed a law allowing the use of international numerals in official institutions and organizations starting from 1 June 1928.

[18] After the new Turkish alphabet was completed, Atatürk introduced the letters to attendees at the Republican People's Party gala in Gülhane on 9 August 1928.

At the end of this process, changes were made based on the commission's recommendations, such as omitting the short dash used to add certain suffixes to the word root and adding circumflexes.

In 2019, during a commemoration program for Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan claimed in his speech that the literacy rate in the Ottoman Empire was higher than 50%, surpassing countries like Russia and Italy at the time.