PDF Dosyası - Ankara Üniversitesi Kitaplar Veritabanı

hinterlands, and Erzincan, Bitlis, Gaziantep, Mardin, and many anothercity. Hatay vvould stili be part of Syria; the Dardanelles vvere to be underan Allied Commission vvith one Turkish member, vvho vvould have novote; much of the remainder vvould have been vvithin the spheres of influenceallotted to France and Italy. These tvvo povvers and Japan vvere to decideon a system to replace the Capitulations even in vvhat remained of anindependent Turkey, vvhich vvould be roughly coterminous vvith the tvvoOttoman provinces of Ankara and Kastamonu. Merchant ships of 1,600tons and över vvere to be confiscated. The army vvas to be reduced to littlemore than a gendarmerie, vvith no artillery or aircraft; the navy vvas toconsist of thirteen gunboats. Deprived of most of her agricultural landand her mineral vvealth, this tiny State in Central Anatolia, vvhich theTreaty of Sevres stili solemnly referred to as the Ottoman Empire, vvouldhave had no economic future, perhaps no future at ali.Aside from saving his country from that dismal fate, and his creationof the Republic, there are three things that Atatürk did vvhich must neverbe forgotten. The fırst is one of his greatest gifts to his people: the changeof alphabet; the second is his part in the language reform.Not a fevv Turks before him had deplored the Arabic and Persiandomination of their language. In 1277, Şemsüddin Mehmed Karamanoğlu,the chief minister of the ruler of Konya, decreed that no languageother than Turkish vvould be spoken at court or in government offices orpublic places, but the decree had little or no effect because he vvas killedin battle shortly aftervvards. Tvvo hundred years later. Mir Ali Şir Neva'ivvrote his Muhakamat al-Luğateyn to demonstrate that Turkish vvas in novvay inferior to Persian as a literary medium. In the nineteenth and earlytvventieth centuries, many spoke and vvrote on the same theme, and manycalled for a change to the Latin letters, but it took Atatürk's iron vvill actuallyto set the language reform in motion and to introduce the nevv alphabet.Where else in the vvorld, vvhere else in history, has there been a Headof State vvho did as Atatürk did to explain a nevv lavv and to follovv it up?Equipped vvith a blackboard and easel, he vvent on a toıır round Anatolia,teaching huge crovvds of villagers the nevv letters, vvhich they called 'Gazielifbası' 'The Gazi alphabet'. Some vveeks of this practical experienceshovved him that the rules of spelling laid dovvn by the Alphabet Commissionvvere capable of improvement, and he improved them. The Commissionhad decided, for example, that a hyphen should be inserted beforethe interrogative partide - 'Geldi-mi?', 'Değil-mi?' By the time hereached Sinop, he had seen that this vvas unnecessary, and he telegraphedthe Ministry of Education to say that the rule vvas abrogated. On his returnto Ankara, he made a number of other improvements, vvhich everyonevvho reads and vvrites Turkish novv takes for granted.782