Turkish language reform
Under the leadership of president Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the reform commenced and persisted with varying degrees of intensity and momentum until the 1970s, following the most profound period of transformation between 1932 and 1938.
For example, they found it more comprehensible to use "Tabii İlimler" (natural sciences) instead of the Arabic term "Ulûm-i Tabiiyye" and resorted to such simplifications in their writings.
The trend toward simplification, which began with İbrahim Şinasi and Namık Kemal, made significant progress with Ahmet Mithat and reached its peak during the Second Constitutional Era with writers like Ömer Seyfettin and Mehmet Emin Yurdakul.
The 1910s witnessed the rise of Turkist and Turanist views within organizations such as the Turkish Hearths and the Committee of Union and Progress.
We expect all our national organizations to be cautious and engaged in enabling the Turkish language to regain its essence and beauty".
Within this society, various subcommittees were established, each assigned with different aspects of the language under what seemed like a "military" organization (linguistics, etymology, grammar, terminology, lexicography, etc.).
This would be achieved by replacing structures and grammar rules borrowed from Arabic and Persian with correct Turkish equivalents.
The simplification of the Turkish lexicon over time led to Turkification, and attempts to replace foreign-origin loanwords used in literary works with sometimes conditioning words that did not even conform to Turkish language rules, posed a risk of the language being disconnected from its cultural and historical sources.
In the autumn of 1936, Atatürk sent his private secretary Süreyya Anderiman along with Agop Dilaçar to the Haşet bookstore in Beyoğlu and had them purchase French geometry books.
During the winter of 1936, Atatürk worked on the book and produced a 44-page volume in which geometry terms were modified and translated into Turkish.
During the Ottoman era, the terminology used in geometry textbooks taught in schools was distant from the daily language of the people and often incomprehensible.
Terms such as "müselles" for triangle, "mesaha-i sathiye" for area, "zaviye-i kaime" for right angle, and "kaide irtifaı" for height were used.
[1] The terms coined by Atatürk, such as boyut, uzay, yüzey, düzey, kesek, kesit, teğet, açı, açıortay, içters açı, dışters açı, eğik, kırık, yatay, düşey, dikey, yöndeş, konum, üçgen, dörtgen, beşgen, köşegen, eşkenar, ikizkenar, paralelkenar, yanal, yamuk, artı, eksi, çarpı, bölü, eşit, toplam, orantı, türev, varsayı, gerekçe are still used unchanged in the Turkish curriculum today.
