bilig SPRING 2014 / NUMBER 69 89-126 Atatürk and the Turkish Terminology Reform: The (Re-)turkification of Geography Terms Burcu İlkay Karaman Abstract This article deals with the investigation of terms in Turkish geography textbooks. A statistical analysis shows that before the terminology reform in 1937, the terminology in geogra- phy texts scanned consisted of up to 94% of Arabic terms, with the remaining terms being either Turkish (3%), or terms derived from Western languages, such as French, Greek and/or Latin (3%). However, just after the terminology re- form in 1937, Arabic terms accounted for only 53% of the terminology, 33% were Turkish, 7% were from Western lan- guages and 7% were hybrids. The desired effect of the efforts of the Turkish Linguistic Society were felt as recently as 1985 when Arabic terms were found to have fallen to 10%, while Turkish terms increased to 70%. However, it is interesting to observe that Western language and hybrid terms also in- creased to 10% over the same period. Keywords Terminology, the Turkish Terminology Reform, terminology reconstruction, terminology policies, Turkish Linguistic Soci- ety, Turkish geography terms, Language and identity _____________ Special thanks to Prof. Serdar Kurt, Prof. Efendi Nasiboğlu, Assoc. Prof. Ali Rıza Firuzan, Assist. Prof. Süleyman Alpaykut, and to Assist. Prof. Emel Kuruoğlu at the Department of Statistics, Faculty of Natural Sciences, Do- kuz Eylül University, Izmir, Turkey, for their guidance and valuable contributions to the statistical analysis per- formed in this article. Assoc. Prof. Dr., Dokuz Eylül University, Department of Linguistics – İzmir / Turkey
[email protected] 89 • bilig SPRING 2014 / NUMBER 69 • Karaman, Atatürk and The Turkish Terminology Reform: The (Re-)turkification of Geography Terms • 1.