The Turkish Language Reform

This is the first full account of the transformation of the Turkish language in the years between 1930 and 1983- probably the most thorough-going piece of language engineering ever attempted. Turkey aimed to "liberate its language from the yoke of foreign languages", and succeeded. By the early 1950s, Ottoman Turkish was dead. At the root of the reform was the young republic's aspirations to be secular and western, seen by conservatives, whether political or religious, as an affront to their ideals. Important both for the study of linguistic change and for the light it throws on twentieth-century Turkish politics and society, this book is not only scholarly and accessible, but is also an extremely good read.