Encyclopedia of and the Muslim World, 2nd edition – 1st/ 8/18/2015 17:52 Page 1197

Turkish

the AKP gave renewed impetus to these initiatives, White, Jenny. Muslim Nationalism and the New Turks. Princeton, which were mutually supported by ’s expanding NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013. trade networks, especially in the . Turkey and overcame their differences and established Gu¨ nes¸ Murat Tezcu¨ cordial relations, and the Kurdish regional government Jalal Talabany Chair of Kurdish Political Studies became one of the closest allies of Turkey in the region. University of Central Florida Turkey also took on the role of mediator in the Israeli- Palestinian conflict and in the controversy regarding ’s nuclear program. Turkey’s increasing regional and global visibility received an endorsement when it LANGUAGE served as a nonpermanent member of the United Turkish is the official language of Turkey (formally Nations Security Council from 2009 to 2010. However, known as the Republic of Turkey) and is the most widely violence and polarization following the Arab uprisings spoken member of the Turkic , with of 2010–2011 greatly complicated Turkey’s relations than 70 million native speakers across , with the Middle East. As the initial euphoria character- eastern , and the Middle East. Although Turkish izing the uprisings gave way to grim geopolitical com- is the largest language in terms of number of speakers in petition, sectarian conflict, and violent extremism, the Turkic language family, it accounts for only about 35 Turkey’s attempt to reshape the Middle East according percent to 40 percent of all speakers of Turkic . to its image proved to have failed. Turkish is also one of the two official languages of and has official status in certain of SEE ALSO Atatu¨rk, Mustafa Kemal (1881–1938); and the Republic of , although the ; ; Nationalism: Turkish; Ottomans; largest number of Turkish speakers outside Turkey can Pan-; Secularization; ; be found in and . Significant Turkish- . speaking minorities exist in countries that formerly belonged to the , such as , Roma- BIBLIOGRAPHY nia, and Serbia. Bloxham, Donald. The Great Game of Genocide: Imperialism, The Turkic language family is composed of about Nationalism, and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians. forty languages spoken in a vast geographic area from Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. southeastern Europe and the Mediterranean in the West Bugra, Ays¸e. State and Business in Modern Turkey: A Comparative to and western in the East (e.., Azerbai- Study. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994. jani, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Tatar, Turkmen, Uyghur, Uzbek, Hale, . Turkish Foreign Policy since 1774. 3rd ed. New Yakut). Although their internal genetic relationship has York: Routledge, 2013. been well established, their external connection to other Hanioglu, M. S¸u¨kru¨. A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire. languages and language families remains controversial. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008. The most widely accepted affiliation is one that links Kafadar, Cemal. Between Two Worlds: The Construction of the to (spoken in Ottoman State. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. and parts of China and Russia) and (spoken in Siberia and northern China), under Kasaba, Res¸at, ed. Turkey in the Modern World. Vol. 4 of The Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. This content is not yet final and Cengage Learning All Rights Reserved. Cengage Learning. 4 Cambridge . Cambridge, U..: Cambridge the Altaic language family, named after the Altai moun- University Press, 2008. tains in . Some versions of the Altaic hypoth- © 201 does not guarantee this page will contain current material or match the published product. Lewis, Bernard. The Emergence of Modern Turkey. 3rd ed. esis also include Japonic and Koreanic languages, and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. some extend northward to include the Uralic family, Mango, Andrew. Atatu¨rk: The Biography of the Founder of Modern although these versions, especially the latter, remain Turkey. Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 2000. highly controversial. Mardin, S¸erif. ‘‘Center-Periphery Relations: A Key to Turkish Turkish is mutually intelligible with many other Politics?’’ Daedalus 102, no. 1 (1973): 169–190. Turkic languages, especially those belonging to the O¨ zyu¨rek, Esra. Nostalgia for the Modern: State Secularism and southwestern (Oghuz) branch of the Turkic language Everyday Politics in Turkey. Durham, NC: Duke University family, which includes Azerbaijani (spoken in Press, 2006. and Iran), Gagauz (spoken in Moldova, Ukraine, and Quataert, Donald. The Ottoman Empire, 1700–1922. 2nd ed. Russia), and Turkmen (spoken in , Iran, Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2005. , and Afghanistan). More specifically, Turkish is Tezcu¨r, Gu¨nes¸ Murat. Muslim Reformers in Iran and Turkey: The descended from the Ottoman (i.e., Osman) branch of Paradox of Moderation. Austin: University of Texas Press, the southwestern Turkic languages, which represented 2010. the variety of Turkish used in the late Ottoman Empire

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ISLAM AND THE MUSLIM WORLD, 2ND EDITION 1197 Not For Sale Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World, 2nd edition – 1st/ 8/18/2015 17:52 Page 1198

Turkish Language Not For Sale (. 699/1299–1922) and, according to some scholars, Africa, areas with predominantly speakers. consisted of three major dialects: Rumelian (spoken in Although the Ottoman literature was not compre- the European parts of the Ottoman Empire), Anatolian hensible to the average Turkish citizen of the Ottoman (spoken in the Asian parts of the Ottoman Empire), and Empire, parallel to this was the production of folk and Crimean (spoken in ). Standard Turkish, as spo- mystical literature, which not only was intelligible to ken in Turkey today, is based on the dialect of Turks at the time but remains comprehensible for speak- Anatolian. ers of modern Turkish to this date. Examples of the latter literature include the works of the famous folk poet and mystic of the thirteenth century CE. HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT The inaccessibility of the standard court/palace lan- The earliest-known Turkic documents can be found in guage to average people led some scholars and writers to the memorial installations called the Orkhon inscrip- call for the ‘‘purification’’ of the Turkish language. As a tions, erected in the early eighth century CE in modern result, during the final two centuries of the Ottoman Mongolia by the Go¨ktu¨rks (Celestial Turks), the first Empire, a movement started toward using a language empire in history with the Turkish (Tu¨rk) in its with local (i.e., native Turkic) features, rather than one name. The language of the documents was , embellished with foreign elements. This movement and they were written using the Old Turkic , a intensified during the last few decades of the empire, runic that was also used by other Turkic and parallel to the process of the rapid loss of Ottoman lands non- later, such as by the Turkic Uyghur with majority non-Turks (, , , Empire (eighth to tenth centuries CE). Serbians, etc.). It was perhaps at its height when the With the Turkic expansion between the sixth and Republic of Turkey, the successor of the Ottoman eleventh centuries CE, peoples speaking Turkic languages Empire, was founded in 1923 on what remained from spread across Central Asia, eventually covering a vast the lost lands of empire—the predominantly Turkish- geographic area from Siberia in the north and Europe speaking areas. The culmination of the purification proc- and the Mediterranean in the west to China in the east, ess was reached when, in 1928, a alphabet was as well as parts of the Middle East. The direct ancestor of introduced by Mustafa Kemal Atatu¨rk (1881–1938), modern standard Turkish, the Oghuz Turkic, was the founder of modern Turkey, to replace the Perso- brought from Central Asia to during the elev- Arabic-based alphabet, as one of Ata- enth century CE by the Seljuqs of the , who, tu¨rk’s reforms. after adopting Islam in the tenth century CE and having Soon thereafter, in 1932, the Turkish Language defeated the Christian , established the Association (Tu¨rk Dil Kurumu) was founded under the first Turkic empire in Anatolia—the Seljuq Empire— patronage of Atatu¨rk. One of the missions assigned to which was, in fact, the target of the First Crusade. this association was to initiate a in order Having adopted Islam, a large set of from to replace loanwords of Arabic and Persian origin with Arabic and Persian entered the administrative and literary their native Turkish or Turkic equivalents. As a result, language of the Seljuq Empire, the ethnic and cultural countless Turkish of foreign origin were banned ancestor of the Ottoman Empire, which, in turn, is the from the press and books, and new words were intro- ancestral state for modern Turkey. The Turkish language duced by the association to replace them, some of which Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. This content is not yet final and Cengage Learning All Rights Reserved. Cengage Learning. during the Ottoman period (c. 699/1300–1922), espe- were derived from existing Turkish words using existing 4 cially the poetry produced for the Ottoman palace and rules of Turkish , whereas others were simple court circle (i.e., diwan literature), was significantly influ- revivals of Old Turkic words that had not been used for © 201 does not guarantee this page will contain current material or match the published product. enced by Arabic and in particular Persian. This influence centuries. The association continues to coin new Turkish was so heavy that the Ottoman language became a mix- words, especially as new concepts and technologies enter ture of Turkish, Persian, and Arabic to the extent that it the life of modern Turks, along with borrowed words was unintelligible to less educated and rural members of from foreign languages, especially English. Although the society, who spoke Turkish with a higher percentage some of the association’s work has not met with success of words with Turkic origin and formed the great major- in that some coined words were found to sound ‘‘artifi- ity of . Thus, the Ottoman language was cial’’ by the general public, most of the words coined by no longer a medium of communication common to all the association have received widespread acceptance and members of the Ottoman society—at least not to the led to incredible success, as indicated by the fact that Turks, although they were the governing ethnicity. modern Turkish is one of the few languages in the world Nevertheless, it may have initially played a unifying effect using native vocabulary even for such technological terms for the Arabic-speaking citizens of the empire, as the as computer (bilgisayar; i.e., ‘‘knowledge calculator’’ in empire extended to most of the Middle East and North Turkish).

1198 ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ISLAM AND THE MUSLIM WORLD, 2ND EDITION Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World, 2nd edition – 1st/ 8/18/2015 18:33 Page 1199

Turkish Literature

LINGUISTIC FEATURES the meaning can still be kept, as the person agreement In terms of its grammatical features—that is, its phonol- markers attached to the verb already indicate what the ogy, morphology, and —Turkish is often cited as a subject is. The subject ‘‘ben’’ in the example above is, prime example with regard to certain features. First, thus, optional. regarding its , it has a perfectly symmetric All these grammatical features are shared by other inventory of eight , four of them back Turkic languages. Thus, because of its striking similarity and four front, four unrounded and four rounded, and to other Turkic languages, both structurally and in terms four high and four non-high (see Table 1). of lexicon, speaking Turkish opens the way to commu-

Table 1. nication with people from a vast geographic area extend- Front Back vowels ing west to east from eastern Europe to the northern and Unround Round Unround Round western frontiers of China, as well as northward to High /i/ // <ü> /i/ <ı> /u/ Low /e/ /ø/ <ö> /a/ /o/ Siberia. SEE ALSO Arabic Language; Atatu¨rk, Mustafa Kemal (1881–1938); ; Turkey; Turkish Table of Turkish Vowels. ª CENGAGE LEARNING/GALE Literature; Language and Literature.

Turkish is often the textbook example case for vowel BIBLIOGRAPHY harmony; it has both ‘‘backness’’ and ‘‘rounding’’ har- Deny, Jean, Kaare Gronbech, Helmuth Scheel, and Zeki Velidi mony, meaning that vowels agree with respect to these Togan, eds. Philologiae Turcicae Fundamenta [Fundamentals features with the preceding vowels in a word. For exam- of Turkic philology]. Wiesbaden, West Germany: Steiner, ple, the alternates between two forms, -ler 1959. and -lar, depending on whether the preceding vowel is Go¨ksel, Aslı, and Celia Kerslake. Turkish: A Comprehensive front or back, as in go¨l-ler (‘‘lakes’’) versus kol-lar Grammar. London: Routledge, 2005. (‘‘arms’’). The suffix with the front vowel /e/ follows Johanson, Lars, and E´va A´gnes Csato´, eds. The Turkic Languages. words ending in a front vowel (i.e., /i, e, y, ø/), and the London: Routledge, 1998. suffix with the /a/ follows words ending in a Kornfilt, Jaklin. Turkish. London: Routledge, 1997. back vowel (i.e., /Ø, a, u, o/). Kornfilt, Jaklin. ‘‘Turkish and the Turkic Languages.’’ In The With respect to its morphology, Turkish is a prime World’s Major Languages, 2nd ed., edited by Bernard Comrie, example of an in which there are 519–544. Abingdon, U.K.: Routledge, 2011. many and each additional suffix contributes a Underhill, . . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1976. meaning to the utterance. It can thus have rather long words to express complex meanings. For example, the following is just one word in Turkish (separated into its O¨ ner O¨ zc¸elik morphemes/suffixes by hyphens) and corresponds to the Assistant Professor, Central Eurasian English sentence ‘‘Are you one of those whom we were Studies; Director, Center for Languages not able to Turkify?’’ of the Central Asian Region Indiana University Tu¨rk-les¸-tir-eme-dik-ler-im-iz-den-mi-sin-iz? Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. This content is not yet final and Cengage Learning All Rights Reserved. Cengage Learning. 4 Syntactically, Turkish is a subject-object-verb (SOV)

© 201 does not guarantee this page will contain current material or match the published product. language, and as with the great majority of SOV languages TURKISH LITERATURE of the world, it has postpositions instead of prepositions. Turkish emerged in the thirteenth century CE as a written These are illustrated in the following example. Note that the literary language in inner Anatolia where Persian was the verb ‘‘come’’ is at the end of the sentence and that postposi- prestige vernacular for literature and correspondence tional phrases such as ‘‘Katie with’’ are used, instead of while Arabic was reserved for religious writing. However, prepositional phrases as in English such as ‘‘with Katie.’’ a long tradition of writing in other branches of Turkic languages already existed at that time, a tradition that Ben Katie ile eve-e gel-di-m I Katie with home-to come (, first person singular agreement) began in the seventh century CE in eastern Asia. Thus, “I came home with Katie.” while Turkish in appeared between the tenth and eleventh centuries CE in Asia, Western Turkish, Turkish Grammar Example. ª CENGAGE LEARNING/GALE which emerged in a modified form of Arabic script, is considered a separate tradition keeping some contact Additionally, Turkish is a null-subject language, with other written Turkic traditions, such as the some- meaning that pronouns can optionally be dropped, and what older Chagatai (or Eastern) Turkish.

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