Actually it was never illegal in Turkey. Q, W, X just not allowed to be used in people/company names because they're not in Turkish alphabet. I think this news mislead by AKP as usual.
Every reference I've found claims that the relevant law made the use of the Turkish alphabet compulsory in all public communication.
E.g. "Minorities and Nationalism in Turkish Law", by Derya Bayir repeats the claim that the Law on the Turkish Alphabet of 1928 "obliged the use of the Turkish alphabet", as part of a section describing legal decisions used to outlaw use of Kurdish and other languages in official communication, and that has also been used to oust elected officials that have allowed use of other languages than Turkish.
In private there has been more flexibility, though until recently, everything I've found (including the book above) indicates there were strict restrictions on use by e.g. private businesses when communicating privately with customers too.
If you have references that contradicts the above mentioned book on these points, I'd love to see them.
..there is no ban for usage of Kurdish letters in public. As i said, because of Q, W, X letters are not in Turkish alphabet, they're just don't allowed to use these letters in names. They just added q - w - x to Turkish alphabet
(btw think about it; USA changing their alphabet, adding another letters, i think general reaction would like "what")
That's why they just write "q - w - x are free" in Turkish version. But in English version, sadly, they're saying kurds can't use their alphabets and they're dramatizing the status of kurds.
Such manipulations are typical for the pro-Islamic AK Party. This was not a democratic reform, it's just propaganda. There are no x, w, q letters in Turkish language hence no place for them in Turkish alphabet. A true democratic reform would be to legalize the Kurdish alphabet and the Kurdish language as a separate language. (And I'm saying that as a so-called 'Kemalist')
The legislation you gave shows Turkish alphabet and Q, W, X is not included in this alphabet. AFAIK, generally country laws only accepts people/company names in their alphabet.
Think that legislation like USA's alphabet. They didn't have Ğ, Ş, İ etc. in their alphabet so people/company names doesn't have these letters. Is that means Ğ, Ş, İ is forbidden? News like this for dramatize the status of kurds in Turkey :)
The legislation goes far beyond restricting that. Unless the english translation is completely wrong, it also required e.g. newspapers and books to use the Turkish alphabet.
That is far beyond legal restrictions in most other countries in the world, and had the defacto effect of placing a lot of restrictions on communication in other languages.
It does look like someone are selling them now, and may possibly have sold them while the laws were still on the books. But enforcement in a situation where a law has long been controversial and changes have been long coming, does nothing to say whether or not it was legal before, and whether or not it at one point was more strictly enforced.
If it hasn't been enforced for some time: Great. But it says nothing about the legality.
It indicates that teaching Kurdish and other minority languages in private schools was allowed from ca. 2002, and so presumably books such as the Kurdish/French textbook at the site you referenced would have been available from no later than then. It says nothing specifically about the alphabet, but that's much closer to a proper source regarding the legality in that it at least specifically cite legal changes that would have been rather meaningless if the teaching material would still remain illegal. This also fits great with the "idefix.com" website itself - the domain was registered in 2002 according to whois.
It of course still only addresses the issue of current legality, not your original claim that it was never illegal, which - unless you can show us that the Google Translate translation is flat out wrong, or that the purported text of the 1928 law I referenced earlier is fake, is directly contradicted by the law itself.
(At the same time, the report complains that as of writing in 2010, the use of Kurdish by public officials was still likely to result in prosecution - so there is certainly still a long way forward).
The Turkish 'Q' layout is the most commonly used in Turkey and includes these 'illegal' letters. If these letters were truly illegal it'd be hard to imagine this keyboard standard existing.
That's like saying it'd be hard to imagine being able to buy alcohol due to prohibition. But in any case, there little doubt that Turkey has reformed a lot over the last two decades in particular, but the original claim I addressed was the claim that "it was never illegal in Turkey".
I posted a link to a copy of the text of the law in question. Maybe it's an inaccurate copy. Maybe it was repealed before it came into force. Maybe the translation is even more broken than it appears. Yet if so, it ought to be easy for the people that are so insistent that it was never illegal to find documentation, such as the real text of the law, a better translation, or documentation of its repeal. Yet none of that appears to be forthcoming, just a stream of examples of recent usage of the letters from after Turkish society started reforming, 50-60 years or so after the law in question was passed.
It's great if the problem has been rectified. But that is far away from claiming it never existed in the first place.
> That's like saying it'd be hard to imagine being able to buy alcohol due to prohibition.
That really is quite a stretch. I'm imagining the absurdity of internet cafes all over Istanbul hiding their bootleg keyboards during a bust.
It's entirely anecdotal but I have Turkish relatives on one side of my family. They were allowed - encouraged - to learn English and French growing up, so the letters themselves certainly weren't illegal. There was no ban on newspapers or books written in other languages. However Turkish was the only officially recognized language in Turkey and Turkish, literally by definition, does not have those letters.
The letter Q was never illegal in Turkey. It was just not allowed to be used in names of people/companies etc. due to the fact that it is not in Turkish alphabet.
Häagen-Dazs has always been allowed to operate in Turkey as well as Quiznos Sub and others.
If you wanted a local company, yes, you were only allowed to use Turkish letters in the official name. They didn't actually care what you actually wrote on your signs though.
Official names being Turkish is important because otherwise officials would have needed to be capable of working with all characters in the universe.
I don't think using "the wrong letters" is illegal in the US. What I've meant was it is as wrong as claiming the usage of "the wrong letters" is illegal in the US.
... because allowing every minority or every individual to use their own alphabet would soon require the full unicode support everywhere, which is not a big deal, as well as that everyone else knows how to read/write it, which is a big deal.
Btw, I am also not allowed to use Cyrillic alphabet or latin "ć" here in Germany when filling out official forms, but I don't consider that my rights are somehow jeopardized because of that.
The Polish minority in Lithuania is autochtone, as far as I know (unlike Cyrillic in Germany). Furthermore, it's not merely a matter of not using the Polish letters - as the link that I provided says, their names get Lithuanized. (Mickiewicz > Mickevičius)
Since I assume you're Serbian (your handle + the mention of ć and Cyrillic), here's an example.
Imagine that the Hungarians in North of Serbia weren't allowed to write their name as Szabo Lajos (or Lajos Szabo) and instead they were forced to use Lajoš Sabić.
> Imagine that the Hungarians in North of Serbia weren't allowed to write their name as Szabo Lajos (or Lajos Szabo) and instead they were forced to use Lajoš Sabić.
You are absolutely right here. I was speaking only about an alphabet part of the problems, and why it is not practical. Forcing someone else to "translate" the name is completely other problem, which is much more severe. There is certainly a difference between writing István as Ištvan simply because it's how it's pronounced and the lack of á in alphabet and forcing him to call himself Ivan (or Stefan).
There are many offenders to this, like Greece, or Bulgaria, or China, which IIRC at one moment required its own citizens to have "westernized" names in their travel documents.
Yup, accents can be pretty critical. In Finnish, näin means "I saw", but nain means "I had sex with". This put a bit of a twist on a friend trying to tell me "I saw the rapist in the park!" when the umlaut dropped off...
You can differentiate the cases by the conjugation of the object though. "nain Annan" (genetive, "all of") is marrying Anna, while "nain Annaa" (partitive, "part of") is fucking Anna. But yes, learners of Finnish should definitely be careful with that verb ;)
That's a sad story, and the alphabet caused some confusion, but the cell phone didn't kill anyone. Ermine's sociopathic father and Turkey's misogynistic culture set the stage for a man to man to lead is futher to gang-murder someone over an oblique and ungramattical insult to sexual purity.
This is common in many cultures. Until recently the letters K,W and Y were "ilegal" in Portugal. Meaning that could not be used in names or official documents.
To put things in perspective, you really need to take a look at the past to appreciate modern Turkey. The Ottoman empire was ruled by Sultan's who wielded absolute power, much like the leaders of other Arab nations today. Prior to the Sultan's were the emperor's of the Holy Roman empire, who wielded power so absolute that even medieval Europeans would have found it unsettling. Much of the symbolism used by European royalty was copied wholesale from Constantinople in attempts to achieve a similar measure of control.
Ottoman society, like many Arab societies today, was heavily inclined towards absolute rule by "strong men". Where most of Europe gradually weaned itself off of absolute rulers by gradually limiting or subverting the power of monarchs over several generations, Turkey literally went from absolute rule to democracy in a single generation. Kemal was an officer during the first world war, which Turkey was on the wrong side of and wound up being partitioned by the allied forces. He played a huge role in reunifying Turkey through armed conflict that expelled the occupying forces. The last Ottoman Sultan was opposed to Kemal and called for his death, but the unification forces instead abolished the sultanate and declared a democracy. Kemal was held in such esteem that he was easily elected to lead this new democracy.
Here's where things get interesting... Kemal's revolution and declaration of democracy are hardly novel. Many nations have undergone similar transformations, and many of the newly elected leaders soon turn into despots. Cultures that favor "strong men" tend to encourage this. Kemal introduced reforms intended to westernize Turkey. Western dress, even hats, were heavily encouraged while his "Hat Law" banned turban's and fezzes (No, the doctor would not have been a fan of Ataturk!).
The new alphabet, seen in light of this wave of westernization, is particularly interesting. Ankara, Istanbul, and many other Turkish cities are full of monuments covered in arabic scrip proclaiming the awesomeness of various Sultan's. It's not unlike how Washington D.C.'s Lincoln memorial, etc., glorify the U.S. system of government, only the Ottoman empire had been accumulating such monuments for a lot longer. The Sultan's of the Ottoman empire lived in the shadow of Constantinople's emperors, so they tended to play themselves up rather a lot.
If you tour Turkey today, your university educated tour guides (practically every guide in Turkey has a degree or two) are extremely unlikely to be able to read a word of arabic script. The new alphabet effectively severed Turkish citizens from centuries of extremely high quality propaganda that the Ottoman empire had accumulated to support the sultanate's rule.
Kemal's legacy is not without it's dark spots, but the "strong man" culture of the Ottoman empire has largely abated. Obviously, it takes time, as people change slowly. Turkish citizens today are more likely to revere Kemal himself as they would a Sultan rather than their prime minister or president. The military has historically seen itself as the guardian of Ataturk's legacy, which has led to some truly unusual coups that, bizarrely enough, have probably kept Turkey on the course of democracy, although recently the power of the military has been gutted.
The Turkish alphabet might be interpreted by some as a form of oppression, but it's adoption was more about breaking with the past and embracing democracy and the west. Compared to it's Arab neighbors, Turkey is astoundingly western and unusually democratic.
Your comment was otherwise well-written, but you misused apostrophes nine times (thrice in the first three sentences), which made it quite painful to read. I'm sure that your writing will be taken much more seriously if you fix this one glitch.
> The Turkish alphabet might be interpreted by some as a form of oppression, but it's adoption was more about breaking with the past and embracing democracy and the west.
Maybe that was the primary motivation, but Turkey has also been unusually brutal about trying to force minorities to embrace Turkish culture.
As I've mentioned elsewhere, I used to know a Turkish journalist that was forced to flee after repeated death threats from the regime because he wrote about the problems the Kurds ran into. These problems ran from not being allowed to even call themselves Kurds for a long time - the regime insisted no such thing as Kurds existed. They were not allowed (and still isn't other than in private schools) to learn their own language in school. Along with a huge range of other restrictions.
That makes it hard to ignore the effect of the alphabet restrictions as yet another part of the cultural oppression.
I don't quite understand why minorities have to have everything in their native language if they chose to live in a foreign country.
I'm a German-born Turk who lives in Germany (Berlin) and I don't have a problem that I had to learn German at school. For me, it's self-explanatory that I have to learn German sooner or later if I plan to live in Germany. It's the same case for everyone who prefers to work and live in a foreign country.
Firstly, they are not immigrants. Turkey is home to a substantial Kurdish minority that predates the establishment of the Turkish state.
Secondly, this is not about having all things in their native language, but about the fact that in many situations using Kurdish will land you in prison, even when speaking to other people whose primary language is Kurdish.
Until recently, a political party that dared distribute material in Kurdish risked being banned from elections, and people involved risk going to prison.
And a 2010 report I linked to elsewhere points out that Turkish officials that dare to use Kurdish in official communication - even if in a Kurdish area, communicating with Kurds - risked prison just a few years ago.
None of that is the case in Germany. In fact, specifically to the Kurds, you will find quite a few Turkish Kurds in Germany who enjoy a lot more freedom to use and learn their language in ways that would at least until recently have put them at risk of prison in their ancestral homes in Turkey.
Further to your school example, it is well established that being given the opportunity to learn your primary home language well is critical to learning another language at school. As such, forcing kids that speak Kurdish at home to learn only Turkish at school places them at a severe disadvantage. If the goal is to give these kids a the best possible chance of getting good at Turkish, the best way of achieving that is to offer them training in Kurdish too.
Yes, but the Kurds in Turkey aren't immigrants. Their families didn't choose to be minorities in an oppressive state, Turkey decided to take their land.
They didn't land on plymouth rock, plymouth rock landed on them.
I don't quite understand why minorities have to have everything in their native language if they chose to live in a foreign country.
I guess it comes down to how the minority group ended up where it is, and how one would define a "foreign country". If a group of people migrate voluntarily, the receiving country would have a legitimate expectation that they'd learn the language, and adopt at least some aspects of the dominant culture.
If a group is conquered (or enslaved), or through some accident of history ends up a minority, I personally don't believe they should be coerced into adopting the ways of the majority. It would be compounding an injustice.
I'm not sure where the Kurds fit in to this - did they really "choose" to live in modern Turkey, the way that Turks who migrated to Germany did?
Ottomans started talking about having a constitutional monarchy in early 19th century and first constitutional government officially started in 1876. However this was short lived and constitution changed 2 years later to weaken the parliament. Second constitutional era starts in 1908 and ends with the collapse of the empire.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chamber_of_Deputies_(Ottoman_Em...
So first steps of a republic was already in place before Ataturk was even born, democracy was the natural choice for the new Turkey.
Sorry but I found most of the other claims you say rather bizarre as well..
Interresting! That's the time when in Bulgaria (part of the Ottoman empire then) started the April Uprising to liberate itself - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_Uprising - and later in 1878 leading to independence for some of the territory, while full one was gained much later.
The Holy Roman Empire was where Germany is today, prior to the Ottoman Sultan Turkey & territories were known as the Byzantine empire aka eastern Roman empire (and before that simply the Roman empire before it split into west & east).
This is a bit like one of those archaic laws like how in Staten Island, can only water your lawn if you hold the hose in your hand. No one actually gives a shit, and no one even knows that this was illegal in the first place.
Both Turkish Q and F keyboard layouts have Q, W and X on them. Everyone uses them all the time, always. You can't use them in your official company name, but that's usually not your publicly visible brand name anyway. E.g. "Biletix", a ticketing company (it was acquired by ticketmaster, but it was called that before the acquisition) http://www.biletix.com/anasayfa/TURKIYE/tr
I don't think the article itself is shooting for this, but the current AKP government is trying to spin this inane and pointless change as "democratization". If they want to democratize things and appeal to oppressed minorities, they can start by taking thought criminals out of prison.
>This is a bit like one of those archaic laws like how in Staten Island, can only water your lawn if you hold the hose in your hand. No one actually gives a shit, and no one even knows that this was illegal in the first place.
Probably water conservation, as it prevents sprinkler use. My city had a similar bylaw as recently as 10 years ago, until a new reservoir was built.
I think this is part of a general de-arabization trend which followed the crumbling of the Ottoman empire, as many words would naturally have been transliterated with a q (which would be ق in the Arabic script, which was used in Ottoman Turkish). I have heard that for many years it was illegal to name a son Muhammad in Turkey - you could only use the "Turkified" version Mehmed or Mehmet.
That's probably part of it, but note that the articles point about e.g. Kurdish meshes well with decades of extensive cultural oppression of the Kurds and other minority groups in terms of outlawing teaching of their language, and even for a while outlawing the very name Kurd as well.
I used to know a Turkish journalist who was granted political asylum in Norway (one of many Turks who had to flee over issues like this) after repeated death-threats from the then-Turkish regime (early 90's) because he wrote articles about the situation of the Kurds.
