Turkish Language
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Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World, 2nd edition – 1st/ 8/18/2015 17:52 Page 1197 Turkish Language the AKP gave renewed impetus to these initiatives, White, Jenny. Muslim Nationalism and the New Turks. Princeton, which were mutually supported by Turkey’s expanding NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013. trade networks, especially in the Middle East. Turkey and Syria overcame their differences and established Gu¨ nes¸ Murat Tezcu¨ r 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 Iran’s nuclear program. Turkey’s increasing regional and global visibility received an endorsement when it TURKISH 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 language family, with of 2010–2011 greatly complicated Turkey’s relations more than 70 million native speakers across western Asia, with the Middle East. As the initial euphoria character- eastern Europe, 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 languages. to its image proved to have failed. Turkish is also one of the two official languages of Cyprus and has official status in certain districts of SEE ALSO Atatu¨rk, Mustafa Kemal (1881–1938); Kosovo and the Republic of Macedonia, although the Caliphate; Kurds; Nationalism: Turkish; Ottomans; largest number of Turkish speakers outside Turkey can Pan-Turanism; Secularization; Turkish Language; be found in Bulgaria and Germany. Significant Turkish- Turkish Literature. speaking minorities exist in countries that formerly belonged to the Ottoman Empire, such as Greece, 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 Siberia and western China in the East (e.g., Azerbai- Study. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994. jani, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Tatar, Turkmen, Uyghur, Uzbek, Hale, William. 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 Turkic languages to Mongolic languages (spoken in Ottoman State. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. Mongolia and parts of China and Russia) and Tungusic languages (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 History of Turkey. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge the Altaic language family, named after the Altai moun- University Press, 2008. tains in Central Asia. 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 Azerbaijan Press, 2006. and Iran), Gagauz (spoken in Moldova, Ukraine, and Quataert, Donald. The Ottoman Empire, 1700–1922. 2nd ed. Russia), and Turkmen (spoken in Turkmenistan, Iran, Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Iraq, 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 (c. 699/1299–1922) and, according to some scholars, Africa, areas with predominantly Arabic speakers. consisted of three major dialects: Rumelian (spoken in Although the Ottoman diwan 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 Crimea). Standard Turkish, as spo- mystical literature, which not only was intelligible to ken in Turkey today, is based on the Istanbul 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 Yunus Emre 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 word Turkish (Tu¨rk) in its with local (i.e., native Turkic) features, rather than one name. The language of the documents was Old Turkic, embellished with foreign elements. This movement and they were written using the Old Turkic script, a intensified during the last few decades of the empire, runic alphabet that was also used by other Turkic and parallel to the process of the rapid loss of Ottoman lands non-Turkic peoples later, such as by the Turkic Uyghur with majority non-Turks (Arabs, Bulgarians, Greeks, 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 Latin 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 Anatolia during the elev- Arabic-based Ottoman Turkish alphabet, as one of Ata- enth century CE by the Seljuqs of the Oghuz Turks, 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 Byzantine Empire, 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 language reform in order Having adopted Islam, a large set of loanwords 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 words 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 morphology, 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.