PDF Dosyası - Ankara Üniversitesi Kitaplar Veritabanı

THE LANGUAGE FACTOR AS THE KEYSTONEOF THE TURKİSH REPUBLIC'S REFORMPROGRAMProf. Dr. Ezel Kural SHAW*In celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Turkish Republie we are infact engaged in an overview of what the tvventieth century has meant forthe Turkish people. Language is a strong indicator of the pace of changethat Turkish society and culture experienced in making the transitionfrom being part of an empire to becoming a nation unified under a republicanform of government. In following the phases of the Turkish languagereform movement, we see how it has been an aetive agent in thetransformation of Turkish identity in the period of the Turkish Republie.Historicism, the desire to explain change in the context of the past touchingthe present, calls for a wider perspeetive in viewing the progress ofTurkish language reform.Ottoman use of Persian and Arabic vocabulary and idiom had been acarry-over from a pre-nationalist era, the Umma period vvhich assumedthe existence of a unifying religious ideology. The Ottoman language vvaspart of a voluntarily shared supra-nationalist civilization. Ottoman becameand remained an administrative language, the acquisition of vvhichallovved for upward social mobility. Turkish was one of the languagesused in the Empire, but it was privileged in that it provided the syntaxthat ordered and managed Arabic, Persian, and some Turkish terms, thusempowering the Ottoman construct. Diverse communities in the Empirepracticed their religion in their own language. The Ottoman governmentlet the different millets, communities based on religious distinetion, conducttheir own internal affairs and practice their own religion. Thoughdominated by Greek-speaking Orthodox elergy into the nineteenth century,communities in the Balkans launehed their nationalist movementsthrough initial stages of securing their own language in conducting religiousservices. The first indications of national avvakening vvere, one mightsay, marked vvith the demand the Greek-speaking orthodox elergy appointedby the Patriarchate in istanbul be replaced by elergy appointed byCalifornia State University, Northridge.797