Term Paper on "Turkey Language Policy"

Term Paper 6 pages (1750 words) Sources: 3 Style: MLA

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Linguistics

The Republic of Turkey: Language Policy and Nationalism

Despite surface appearances, many modern countries exhibit a considerable amount of linguistic diversity. One notable example, the Republic of Turkey, officially endorses Turkish as its national language while many minority groups within its territory actually speak other languages - many of them entirely unrelated to the national tongue. A number of these linguistic minorities actually represent ethnic enclaves from neighboring populations. Among these are the Greeks, Albanians, Serbians, Bulgarians, and so forth. Others, such as the Kurds, consist of a population that is largely geographically homogeneous, but lacks its own national state. Still others, as for example Armenian, are, or were, once fairly widely dispersed throughout what is now modern Turkey. According to the site, Ethnologue.com, a total of thirty-six languages are spoken in modern Turkey, of which twelve (one is extinct) are found in the European portion of the country, while the remaining are employed in Asiatic Turkey.

Turkish is the sole official language of the Republic. As noted in Wikipedia, precise figures on the numbers of minority language speakers are difficult to come by because of official government policy that does not denominate Turkish citizens according to ethnicity, race, or language spoken.

On the whole, Turkish policy of the past eighty or so years has reflected an extreme emphasis on Turkish nationalism. In the aftermath of the Ottoman Empire, Turkey's new ruling class devoted itself to transforming what remained of the polyglot empire into a monolithic state - one people, one culture, one language. For the Young Turks, this extreme form of the nation state was seen as the very essence of modernity; its successful creation would mark the Republic of Turkey's entry into the ranks of modern and progressive nations, and its parity with the developed countries of the West. In its early days the new, westernizing nation-state launched an all out war against speakers of minority languages, a newspaper in Izmir carrying the following announcement in 1928:

Citizen, do not make friends with or shop from those so-called Turkish citizens who do not speak Turkish. We request from our lady citizens who work as telephone operators: Please immediately cut off conversations in Greek and Latino. (Aslan, 2007, p.245)

The message was clear: "real" Turks did not speak anything but Turkish. Those who continued to speak minority languages were to be ostracized, social pressures accomplishing what legislation alone could not necessarily achieve. The Ottoman Empire that had once stretched from the Balkans in Europe, to Mesopotamia in Asia, and far along the coast of North Africa was, as a result of the treaty of Sevres in 1920, reduced to the Turkish states present borders. The great metropolis and imperial capital of Constantinople (now Istanbul) at the center of a tiny European enclave, while the rest of the country stretched across the vast arid reaches of Asia Minor (Anatolia). The old empire's population had included a mix of Turks, Greeks, Armenians, Jews, Kurds, and many other nationalities. In the capital itself, a variety of languages were spoken, with each group following its own customs and practicing its own religion. The Treaty of Sevres guaranteed to the new state a certain integrity of territory and national identity. (Smith/Kocamahhul, 2001, p.45) In particular, the Treaty emphasized the use and preservation of the Turkish language as a symbol of national unity. (Smith/Kocamahhul, 2001, p.45) Further, the "Citizen, Speak Turkish!" campaign was intended as a rallying cry to the new nation's intellectual elite who would strive together to forge secular and modern state out of the ruins of the empire. Indeed, many were inspired by this call to establish a uniquely Turkish idiom for industrialism and forward thinking. (Aslan, 2007, p.246) The Turkish language itself was even modernized, being shorn of the Persian and Arabic loanwords that modernizers felt had given visible evidence of the nation's backwardness. (Candar, 2000, p. 88) Europe not Persia was to be the country's cultural model. Secularism, and not Islam with its Arabic religious texts, was to be the ruling creed.

In the same period, the new state was largely purged of its minority populations. The Greeks were "exchanged" for Turks in a 1924 agreement. (Aslan, 2007, p.245) The Ladino-speaking Jews of Constantinople were driven out. And the Armenians, once a significant presence in the capital, and throughout the Asiatic empire, were first slaughtered in the hundreds of thousands, and afterwards, those who remained were compelled to flee in sizable numbers. Eastern provinces that had once been predominantly Armenian became Turkish, leaving only the northeastern Kurdish areas as a major outpost of non-Turkish language and ethnicity. Though Sunni Muslims like the majority of Turks, the Kurds speak their own Indo-European language and preserve many customs and traditions that are distinct from those of the majority Turks. Secure in their rugged homeland, and discreet in terms of their geographic distribution, the Kurds have rebelled regularly against Turkish central authorities since 1925, only two years after the Republic's founding. (Smith/Kocamahhul, 2001, p.46)

Hatay, on the Syrian border, also remains a powerful symbol of local nationalisms. A combination of Turks, Arabs, Armenians, Alevis, and additional, non-Armenian Christians once constituted the province's population.

Actually independent from 1923 to 1938, Hatay is still claimed by Syria. (Smith/Kocamahhul, 2001, p.46) To the Turks, the area represents the problems inherent in a region that is not overwhelmingly Turkish in language, culture, and outlook. In a region often wracked by war, ethnic and linguistic unity can all too easily be seen as the key to group survival.

Turkey's campaign to impose an all-embracing oneness on its population can be viewed from numerous angles. From the point-of-view of supporters of Turkish as the sole national and official language, Turkish serves as the glue that binds together a people struggling to find their place in the modern world. A single tongue replaces the lost imperial authority of an outdated and outmoded empire. In common with other modern nations, it is the people of Turkey who theoretically govern their country and decide upon the direction it takes. The sultans no longer direct affairs according to ideas of state and government that derive ultimately from the Koran and from ancient Turkish tribal traditions. A single language permits all to share in the same education, and to work together toward common goals. The new language, with its modified Roman alphabet to replace its former Arabic-inspired orthography, functions as a bridge to the technologically-advanced civilization of Europe. It tells Turks that they desire the same things, the same rights, and standard of living as the peoples of Europe and North America. On the other hand, Turkey's often virulent cultural and linguistic nationalism can set it apart from the contemporary West. While extreme nationalism was once the order of the day among all the major Western powers, European nations in particular have come to favor a more communal and internationalist approach. The European Union represents a breaking away from strictly nationalist cultural and linguistic traditions, and a coming together of numerous variants of the European tradition. Within the European Union, minority languages have fought for, and to a great extent achieved, a certain parity with more widespread national languages. Speakers of Gaelic, Breton, Basque, Occitan, Catalan, and other tongues are increasingly insisting upon the right to educate their children in their native tongues, and to conduct business in the languages with which they feel most comfortable. Preserving these local languages also means preserving local customs, traditions... And pride. Turkish suppression of local languages, such as Kurdish, tends toward the suppression of regional differences and can result - as also in the Kurdish case - in the alienation of minority peoples. Though many Kurds have achieved considerable success and recognition by "becoming Turkish" and adopting the national official language, they have generally done so at the expense of breaking bonds with their fellow Kurds. (Smith/Kocamahhul, 2001, p.46) Groups that share affinities with peoples outside of Turkey can also move closer to those other nations and so disrupt the very national unity that has been one of the chief goals of Turkish linguistic nationalism. People who have lived within what is now Turkey for centuries feel like second-class citizens, cut off from the national life, and denied the same rights and benefits as other Turkish citizens. In such instances, discrimination on linguistic grounds is little different from racial, ethnic, or religious bigotry. The group against whom this discrimination is practiced can suffer in terms of educational attainment, economic development, and cultural achievement.

Turkish linguistic nationalism has a long history and is directly linked to Turkish nationalism on a multitude of other levels. After the fall of the Ottoman Empire, Turkey's new leaders sought to create a state that was unified ethnically, culturally, and linguistically. Unity on all these levels would correspond to unity of purpose - to Turkey's goal of becoming a secular, industrialized, and progressive modern state capable of holding its own against the European powers and competing with Europeans and North Americans on… READ MORE

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