aaron johnson- road to turkish language reform and the rise of turkish nationalism

7/27/2019 Aaron Johnson- Road to Turkish Language Reform and the Rise of Turkish Nationalism

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The Road to Turkish Language Reformand the Rise of Turkish Nationalism

Aaron JohnsonInstitute of lslamic Stu diesMcGill University, MontrealAugust 2004

A thesis subm itted to McG ill University in partial fulfilmentof the requirements of the degree of Master of A rtsO Aaron Johnson 2004


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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First and forem ost, 1 would like to thank my thesis supervisor, Professor A. Uner Turgay,for his guidance and encouragement throughout the writing of this thesis.

I am also extremely grateful to Salwa Ferahian and Wayne St. Thomas in the IslamicStudies libray for all their assistance in locating sources, and to Ann Yaxley and KirstyMcKinnon for alway s being there whe n 1 needed h elp with the adm inistrative side ofthings.

On a more personal note I would like to thank 6zge Serin for inviting me to Turkey backin 1994 and starting me down this path, and Jonathan Smolin for his advice andencouragement over the years. I am also very grateful to Amelia Gallagher and FaikaCelik, who helped me imm ensely with their proofreading and comm ents.

Finally I would like to thank my wife, Nazak Bij and ifar , for putting up with me throughthe whole writing process and for reminding me to eat and sleep. I could not have donethis without her.


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ABSTRACT

This thesis examines the concurrent changes in Turkish identity and in the Turkishlanguage from the early developments in the period of the modernizing Tarcimar reformsto the Anatolian Turkish nationalism and the alphabet and language reform of theRepublican era. It looks specifically at how language issues played a large role in thedevelopment o f Turkish national identity towards the end of the Ono man period, and alsoexamines the development of Onomanism and Islamism. Finally it looks at how thedesire to promote secular Turkish nationalism in place of the old Ottoman-Islamicidentity was the driving force behind the Kernalist script and language reforms anddiscusses some of the consequen ces of these planned changes to the T urkish language andto the basis o f Turkish identity.


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Ce memoire traite des changements qui ont eu lieu en m fm e temps dans I'identite tu q u eet dans la langue turq ue a pan ir de la periode de rtfo ml e et de modemisation du Tanrimatjusqu'au nationalism e turc anatolien et B la reforme de I'alphabet et de la langue dans laperiode republicaine. Ce travail e tudie spk ifi qu em en t le grand r61e que le tht m e dulangage a joue dans le developpement de l'identitt nationale turque vets la fin de lapiriode ottomane, et aussi s'occupe du developpement de l'onomanisme et deI'Islamisme. Finalement, on examine comment le desir de propager le nationalisme turcla'ic en place d e l'ancienne identiti ottomane-lslamique a m o t i d les reformes kdmalistesde I'alphabet e t de la langue, et on termine avec une discussion de quelques consequencesde ces chan gements planifiCs par rappo rt A la langue et B la base de I'identitC t uq ue .


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CONTENTSIntroduction

Chapter One: The T ~ z i m u tnd the Young OttomansThe Tanrimat and OnomanismThe Tm i m a r Refonns. Western Influences and ModernizationThe Onoman Turkish LanguageThe Rireof Turkisb Book PublishingThe Binh o f T u r k i ~ h o u m a li ~ mThe Young DnomansEarly Effans at Scr ipt Reform

Chapter Two: The Reign of AbdULhnmit IlThe Pin t Constihltional PeriodIslamism and Pan-lslamismHamidian Refoms and Continued ModernizationCensorship and OppositionIntellectual and Linguistic DevelopmentsFunher Dcvclopmentr in Turkism

Chapter Three: The Second C onstitutional PeriodThe 1908 RcvolutiooTwk ism and Pan-TwkismThe Yeni Lkan M ov em en t an d h e r SeyfeddinZiya G dkalp and Twk ish NationalismRenewed Effani at Script Reform

Chapter Four: Turkish Nationalism and Reform in the RepublicTh e War of ndependence and the Establishment of the RepublicThe Ne w Turkish NationalismThe Early Kemalist RefomsAdoption of the Latin AlphabetTurkish rnWorshipThe Turkish H istorical Society


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Chapter Five: The Turkish Linguistic Society and Language ReformThePolitical Sihlation in the 1930s 87TheLanguage Refom 88The Sun-Language Theory 94

ChapterSir: Later DevelopmentsOnornsn Continuify in the Turkish RcpublicThe Turkish Language

Conclusions 102

Works Cited 105


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INTRODUCTION

Ottomanism, Pan-Islamism and Pan-Turkism were all doctrines intended to save theOnom an Empire, to halt its fragmentation. They represented different ideas as to what thebasis of loyalty should be for the subjects (eventually citizens) of the empire. Thechanging realities of the time, as the empire continued to lose territory and the OnomanTurks found themselves more and more in the majority in the territory that remainedunder Ottom an control, eventually led to an increased emphasis on T urkism and finally toTurkish nationalism based on the territory that remained in Anatolia and Thrace. At thesame time, the older Onoman-Islamic identity never completely disappeared, despite theKemalist program o f Turkification, secularization and Westernization.

Closely linked with the story of the development of Turkish nationalism is the story ofTurkish language reform, all of which is also tied up with the rapid growth of Turkishpublishing activity in the last century of the empire. According to Geo ffrey Lewis,

The spirit of the Tanzimat ... gave rise to the first serious stirrings ofTurkish nationalism and to a flowering ofjournalism , and from then on thetide of language reform flowed strongly.'This inc rease in publishing activity provided a new forum for the spread of political ideas,

' Geofiey Lewis, The Twkirh Lanpog e Reform: Colmlrophie Success (Oxford:Oxford UniversityPress, 1999), 12.I


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and at the same tim e provided an im petus for the simplification of Onoman Turkish thatwould allow writers and publishers to reach a larger audience. The growing amount ofreading material in Turkish also helped, by its mere presence and circulation, to bringabout a greater awaren ess of Turkish identity amo ng its readers.

Many o f the major figure s in the history of Turkish nationalism are also major figures inthe history of Turkish language reform, which makes sense since language is often amajor ingredient in national identity. As Bemard Lewis writes,

For the first signs of a Turkish national consciousness among the OttomanMuslims we must tum o the intellectual life of the nine teenth centurv, andespecially to the w riters on history and language."

There are a number of books that deal with Turkish language reform or with Turkishnationalism, but there are only a few that treat Turkish language reform and Turkishnationalism toge ther in any detail. In fact, som e of the connections made by these authorsare rather loosely built. The Developmenf of Secularis n~~ Turke)' by Niyazi ~ e rk e s ' ndThe Emergence ofModern Turkey by Bernard Lewis both include long and very usefulsections on nineteenth-century Onom an intellectual history, including much on Imlguageand the early inklings of Turkish nationalism. David Kushner's The Rise of TurkishNationalism 18 76 -19 0p and Masami Arai's Turkish Nafiona lism in the Young Turk ~ r a 'each provide a good am ount of detail o n the discussions going o n in the newspapers andjournals over shorter periods, and both books include much on the language issue. Agih

Bernard Lewis, The Emergence of Modern T u r k q , 3d ed. (New York: Oxford Univen iy Press, 2002);14 ,


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S m Levend's Turk Dilinde G elijm e ve Sadelejme Evreleri (The Stages of Developmentand Sim plification in the Turkish ~ a n ~ u a ~ e ) ~onsists mostly of passages that illustrateboth the changes that the Turkish language has undergone over time and the debates onthe issue up until the actual reforms of the Turkish Republic. For an overview of thereforms in the Turkish Republic, Uriel Heyd's Language Reform in Modern ~ u r k r J asbeen largely surpassed by Geoffrey Lewis' The Turkish Language Reform: ACafasfrophicSuccess, which goes into much more detail and is much more up-to-date.The book's main shoncoming is that Geoffrey Lewis shies away from dealing with thepolitics behind the reforms. Finally, BiM $im$ir's Turk Yazr Devrimi (The TurkishAlphabet evolution)' provides a detailed account of the switch to the Latin alphabetwith copious background information.

Whal follows is an examination of the origins of Turkish nationalism and Turkishlanguage reform, and of the concurrent transformation of the Turkish-speaking Muslimsubjects of the Ottoman sultan into citizens of the Turkish Republic and of the languageof the Onom an co un into the national languag e of the Turkish Republic. In looking at thestages in these transformations, every effort has been made to give adequate backgroundinformation on the historical and political situation at the time. Early developn~ents renot included merely a s a "'pre-history" of the Turkish Republic and the Kemalist reforms.However, much of what happened before the Republican period can help explain theissues that still face Turkey today, as there is in fact much more continuity between the

*Agah S m evend. Turk Dilinde Gel i~m e e Sode lqm e Evrrleri, 3'* cd. (Adera : Turk Dil KununuYaymlan, 1972).'Uriel Heyd,Language Reform in hhdern Turkey (Jerusalem:Israeli Oriental Society. 1954).Bilil N. $lm~ir, tirk Ya-r Dtyrimi (Ankara: urk Tarih K u m u Basmevi, 1992).


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Ottoman state and the Turkish Republic than some Kemalists might want to admit.

Chapter one gives background information on the Onom an Turkish language and looks atdevelopments up to the first constitutional period (1876-1878), including the Tanzimarreforms, the influence of western-style nationalism, the doctrine of Onomanism, thespread of modem publishing activities, the Young Ottomans, and early efforts to reformthe Arabic script.

Chapter two covers the Ham idian period (1876-1908) including the 1876 constitution, theofficial emphasis on Islamism , the continuation of reform, official censorship, the rise ofexile opposition groups, the growing interest in the Turkish language issue, and thedevelopment of Turkism.

Chapter three deals with developments during the second constitutional (Young Turk)period (1908-1918), including Turkism and Pan-Turkism, the emergence of Turkishnationalism, the Yeni Lisan (New Language) movement, Ziya Gokalp's ideas on languageand nationalism, and ongoing efforts to reform the A rabic script.

Chapter four examines the early reforms of the Turkish Republic and the newterritorially-defined Turkish nationalism. The 1928 "alphabet revolution" is discussed indetail, and Kem alist efforts to impose the use o f Turkish in worship a re also examined, asis the work of the Turkish H istorical Society.

Chapter five deals with the T urkish Lingu istic Society and the later reform that purged the4


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Turkish language of much of its Arabic and Persian vocabulary, paying special attentionto the politics behind the reform, particularly the more militant secularism of the 1930s.The Sun-Language Theo ry is also discussed.

Chapter six then looks briefly at later developments involving Turkish nationalism andthe Turkish language. including Onoman-Islamic continuity in the Republic, Turkishidentity issues and the resurgence of Islamic identity. racial Turkis h nationalism, and thecontinuing co nsequences of the lmgua gc reform.

The Kemalists engineered radical changes to both the Turkish language and to the basisof 'Turkish identity, and rhese developments stand in sharp contrast with the earlier. morenatural developments in the late Ottoman period. While efforts have been made toillustrate both the positive and negative aspects of these changes, in the end any realjudgment on these issues is left to the people who are living with their consequences.


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CHAPTER ONETHE TANz~MATAND THE YOUNG OTTOMANS

The Tanzimafand Ottomnniam

It was during the reign of Mahmut I1 (1808-1839) that the idea of an O nom an slate beganto emerge, "composed of peoples of diverse nationalities and religions, based on secularprinciples of sovereignty as contrasted with the medieval concept of an Islamic empire."9It was also during his reign that the twin problems of foreign intervention and nationalismamo ng the millets really began to emerge

The miller system began to emerge in international diplomacy as aninviolate system that was no longer a unilateral grant of status andprivileges to the non-Muslim communities; they were seen as havingacquired rights as naiionaliiies guaranteed by the protection of theChristian powers of Europe.''The doctrine of Ottomanism (Osmanlrlrk) which began to emerge during the reign ofMahmut I1 stressed the equality o f all Ottoman subjects in an attempt to undermine the

' erkes, Dwelopment ofSemlarism in T w k q , 90.' O lbid., 96.At this point the word millet referred to a nan-Muslim community in the Ottoman Empire, forexample, the GreekOnhodon comm unity. Later the word took on its modern meaning of "nation."

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variou s national movem ents that threatened the empire." As for externa l threats. AkifEfendi (later Pqa, 1787-1845) would write a memorandum in 1822 examining differentways the empire could address the threats facing it, particularly from Russia. The firstoption he gav e was defense of the emp ire through Holy War; he second was "slavery." orcoming under colonial rule; while the third was withdrawal to ~ n a to li a ."

Tne Tanzimar (literally "re-orderings") officially began o n November 3, 1 839 with thepromulgation o f the Tanzimar Chm er. the Half-r $erif(Nohle Rescr ipt) of Gtilhane, just afew months after Mahmut died and was succeeded by h is son Ahdiilmecit I(183 9-18 61).Ottomanism "found its most formal expression" in the Hart-I Serif, which grantedequality under the law to all persons regardless of religion." Th is represe nted a "radicalbreach with ancient Islamic tradition," and many M uslims could not easily accept the ideathat the infidel On am an subjects were their equals." Still, it was hoped that suchguarantees "would strengthen the indepen dence and integrity of the O ttoman Em pire byincreasing the loyalty of its subjects, Christian as well as Muslim, and by diminishingseparatist tendencies."" Th is trend was continued with the Hart-I Hiimayun (ImperialRescript) of February 18, 1856, which reaffirmed the Tanrimat Charter and went evenfurther in granting equality regardless of religion. What's more, it did so in a languageand tone which w ere "more m odem and western, to the point of clarity and conciseness

" Roderic Davison, "'Nationalismas an Onoman hoblcrn and the Onoman Response," hNolionolism in oNon-Norionol Store: The Dis~olurion fthe Ollomon Empire. ed. William W. Haddad and WilliamOchsenwald (Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State Univmity Prcrr, 1977), 39-40,'' B. Lewis, Emergence ofModern Turkq, 325." Daviron, "Nationalism as an Oltoman Problem," 39."B. Lewis, Emergence of Modern Tu rkq , 107.I Rodw is H. Davison, Rqfarm in the Ollomon Empire 1856.1876 (New York: Cordian Press, 1973). 40-1.

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unusual for Ottoman documents of those days."'6 An 1855 decree had stated that officialdocuments would now be Mlrjtten in a simpler Ottoman Turkish, and the effects of thisdecree could be seen in the simpler style of the 1856 Hatt-r ~ u r n u ~ u n . "

The provisions of the Hurr-r Hiimayun "were mostly directed to the non-Muslim milletsand aimed at ending their desire for autonomy or independence."18 Prior to the Tanzimrrr.the millets had been "little theocracies within an empire," each under its own spiritualleader.'' With the Hatt-r H!imayrm of 1856, they "underwent secula rizin g constitutionalchanges" and became "little non-territorial republics and incipient nation^."'^^ At thesame time. the demographic situation was made even more complicated by the number,diversity and geograph ic distribution of the various nationalities in the Ottoman Em pire.They had gone through centuries of racial mixing, and the various "religiouscombinations, syncretisms of all kinds, and different varieties of crypto-Muslims" didn'tsimplify The Ottoman Empire was in effect "a body politic entirely made up ofethnic minorities.""

On top of this, as Andrew Mango poin ts out. "Script and religion went together: Turkish-speaking Greeks wrote Turkish in Greek characters, Armenians and Jews in their own

"Kid,55."Stanford J . Shan and Ezcl Kuml Shaw, Histoq ofrhe OIIomonEmpire ond Modern Turkey, ol. 2.Reform, Rwolurlon, andR epublic: TheRise @Modern T u r k q , 1808.1975 (Cambridge: CambridgeUnivernily Press, 1977), 129." bid., 125.l9 Berker, Dwelopment ofSecularism in Twke), 158.

lhid:' Davinon, "Nationalism as an Onoman Problem." 30-5." bid.,46.


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alphabet."" Sin ce identity at the time wa s based primarily on religious affiliation, whatthis means is that, for example. Turcophone Greek Orthodox Christians w o t e Turkish inthe Greek alphabet since that was the alphabet of their religion. Many Greeks andArmenians, meaning Greek Orthodox Christians and Armenian Gregorian ApostolicChristians, spoke only Turkish while there were "Turks" who spoke only Greek, forexample in Crete. Roderic Davison gives an example of a man from Ankara who wastraveling in Austria around the middle of the nineteenth century. When asked hisnationality, he insisted that he was a C atholic and only a C atholic, failing to mention thathe was an Ottoman subject or that he was A rm e ~ ~ ia n .~ '

With the spread of westem-style nationalism based on language and ethnicity in themiddle of the nineteenth century, the Christian minority groups began placing moreemph asis on their respective vernacular languages."' For instance, Im ir- bo rn A dam antiosKorais (1748.1833) worked at creating a new literary language th ou gh a combination ofvernacular and classical Greek, and "his edition of the Greek classics served as theliterary-linguistic found ation of Greek nationalism."" In the 1840s, a growing Armenianpress began to use the vernacular in place of the old church language, gradually bringingwrinen Arm enian closer to the spoken language." Kemal Karpat points out that for theSerbs and the Bulgarians, religion was only of secondary importance in the formation ofnational identity. Instead, "language, ethnic culture, and the memory of their historical

Andrew Mango, Arorurk (London: John Murray, 1999). 464.I 4 Daviron, "Nationalismas an Onoman Problem," 3 2. 34 .L' Daviron, Reform in the Onomon Empire. 62.a Kcmal H. Karpat, An Inquiry into the Social Foundarlons ofNarhnolism in the Orlomon Slare: FromSocialEslores to Clurses, from Millers ro Notions (Princeton, New Jersey: Center of international Studies,1973). 75.27 Davinon, Reform in the Orloman Empire. 121

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states prior to the Turkish conquest in the fourteenth cenrury served as the fountainheadof national identity."'8

It was with the aim of fostering political unity that the men of the T a n - i m a t beganreferring to the language as Onoman ( O s m a n L c a or l i s a n - I O s m a n i , as opposed to k a b aT i i r k qe , the "coarse Turkish" of the common people), and to the state as M i l l e r - iOsmaniye?' Facing nationalist agitation in the 1860s. official Onoman documentscontinued to refer to groups within the empire by religious a ffiliation, avoiding even themention of the concept of nationalism or of designations such as "Greek" or "Romanian.""Ottoman policy could not, any more than could Austro-Hungarian policy, afford toadmit such a thing as a princ iple of nationality or o f national self-detennination.")O

In 1869, new laws on nationality were introduced. The first of these laws "substitutedmodem political definitions of nationality and naturalization for the old criterion ofconversion to slam."" Everyone living in Onoman territory would now he considered anOttoman subject barring proof to the contrary, and Ottoman subjects were henceforthrequired to obtain official permission before becoming a citizen of another state. This wasaimed at curbing the practice where Onoman Christians gained special privileges byadopting fo reign nationality?'

I S Karpat, Social Foundorionsof Norionalism, 82.''Levend, Tiirk Dilinde Gelijme, I I ; Davisan, R$om in rhr Orroman Empire, 62- 3.'' Davison, .'Nationalism as an Ottoman Problem." 5 1." Daviron,Reform in rhr Orroman Empire, 26 2-3 ."'id., 263.


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The Tanzimal Reforms, Western Influences and M odernization

There was growing contact w ith the W est at this time, and m ore people were beginning tolearn European languages. An important development in the intellectual history of theOnoman Empire was the establishment of the Tercume Odasr (Translation Bureau) byMahmut 11. Tne Translation Bureau wa s founded to translate government co rrespondence,both "external and intercomm unal," but it gradually evolved into "a co llege of foreignlanguages... [where] future Turkish intellectuals got their s ta ~ t. "~ 'Westerners were alsoemployed, including the English Orientalist Redhouse, and the young Ottomanbureaucrats who worked there were exposed not only to western languages (primarilyFrench), but also to w estern ideas?' At the sam e time, Serif Mardin notes that "with theincreased number of foreign experts employed by the Porte in the 1840's and 1850's.Westem popular as well as serious literahue became more widely available in theO ttoman ~ m ~ i r e . " "

Important reforms that were implemented during the Tanrimat period include theestablishment of secular criminal tribunals in 1847, the promulgation of a secularcommercial code in 1850, and an Ottoman Bank established in 1856. But a pdcularlyimportant area of reform was education. New eight-year rupdiye (adolescence) schoolswere opened beginning in 1838, and provided a modem secular secondruy education toyoung m en who chose not to pursue a career as a traditional religious scholar. In 1845 acomm ission was formed with the task of revamping the entire educational system. and the

Berker, D~yelopment fSeculorism in Turki?: 128.I' Davison, Reform in rhe OIIomon Empmpbe, 29 ." Serif Mardin, The Genesis of Young Ollomon Thought: A Sludy in !he Modernizorion of Turkish PolilicolI d m (Princeton,New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1962), 194-5.


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Ottoman Ministry of Education was then created in 1847." Between 1 845 and 1868"cducation was almost completely secularized," and 1868 saw the opening of a newFrench-style (vcde (the Galatasaray lycie in Beyoglu) where the language of instructionwas ~ re nc h. )' Plans were made for an Ottoman university, the Dariilfiiinur? (House ofSciences), which opened briefly in 1870-1871 and again in 1874-1881 hut was not"definitively" opened until 1900.)'

For an Ottoman bureaucrat in the middle of the nineteenth century, education basicallymeant the ability to read and wite, and "reading and writing were no mean achievements,considering the diff~cultyo f the language and the calligraphic system, and especially thecomplexity of the official style, which was loaded with Arabic and Persian terminologyand often sought elegance of expression at the expen se of clarity."" Afler lea rning how toread and write in primary school (and from the 1840s on, in one of the few secondaryrQdiye schools), a boy would be employed as a krjtip (secretary) in a government officeand com plete his education on the job. In 1838, a sch ool (the Mekteb-i Maarif-i Adliye, orSchool for Secular Learning) was founded with the specific purpose of trainingbureaucrats for government employment.'D

In 1850, the Encumen-i Dani$ (Council of Knowledge) w as founded to help pave the wayfor an On oman university. Although the preparation of textbooks was meant to be one of

" b id . , 163.225; Shaw and Shaw, Hirtory o fth e Ottomon Empbe, 47, 107.37 Mardin. Genesis ofYoung Olromon Thoughl, 163.''Shaw an d Shaw. Histom of the Ottoman Emoire. 1 o.,"DDaviron,Reform in the Onomon Empire, 32-3

hid, 33,45.


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its ma in purposes, all that actually emerged 'om this effort was a handfu l of books."Still, it is also significant that the Enciimen-i Dani$ had been intended to work towards'the simplification of the Ottoman language and the spreading of kn~wledge."~'Oneproject it discussed was an Ottoman dictionary which would limit the number of foreignwords, particularly Arabic and Persian words. that would be "accepted for commonusage."JJ According to Serif Mardin, T h e new approach to language indicated that thegeneral reader and the man in the street were beginning to be given an importance whichthey had not been able to acquire in the eyes of the intellectuals of a bygone socialorder."4'

While Arabic had been the language of traditional medrese (religious school) learning,Ottoman T urkish was now gaining ground a s the language of secular education in the newTamimat s c h o ~ l s .' ~ s early as 1845, the commission working on the new seculareducation system "recommended elimination of many Arabic and Persian words andexpressions and their replacement with T urkish coun terpa ~ts." '~

The new Tamimat educational system also led to the creation of a new elite which"adopted European tastes in d ress and in social intercourse, in literature and in thought.'"This new elite soon developed a sense o f group identity. became " th e bearers of public

" bid., 45.''Mardin, Genesir of Young Onomon Thought, 226." Davison, Reform in the Otlomvn Em pi~ e, 77 ."Mardin, Genesir of Young Ottoman Thought, 227." Berkes, Development 0fSecu lorbm h Turkey, 192-3." ha w and Shaw, H ist ov of the Otlomvn Empire, 129." DankwrutA. Rustow, ''The Modernization of Turkey in Historical and Comparative Pcrrpcctivc." inSocivi Change vndPolilier in Tw&: A Slmctural-Historicd Ana(wlr . cd. Kemsl H. Karpat (Leiden: E.J.Brill, 1973). 100.


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opinion," and "proceeded to form political associations to give expression to suchopinions.''JS There was a great deal o f interdependence between political and literary life,where the major writers were also at the forefront in the "movement of ideas."49 In theend, the establishment of the new educational system was an extremely importantdevelopment, since Turkey's future leaders would receive their educations in the schoolsfounded during the ~anzimat. '~

In addition to these advances in education, lhe Tan-imat also witnessed otherdevelopments in culture and communications. Western influence can be seen in many ofthe cultural and technological innovations of this period. For example, the first western-style theaters appeared beginning in 1839, and the Italian influence can be seen in theword r iyafro?' At the same time, French w as making inroads amo ng the educated elite.

The possible invasion of French as a medium of teaching, and a s a vehiclefor expressing new ideas and ideals provided the stim ulus for an aw akenedinterest in a modem Onoman and for identifying it with the Turkishlanguage i t ~ el f . '~

The telegraph was introduced into the Onoman Empire during the Crimean War (1853-1856), and would play an important role in years to com e. "Messages at first were sent inboth French and Ottoman, with the latter transcribed into Latin letters until an Onomanscript machine was invented (w ith 428 cha racters) for the task."53 Serif Mardin writes that

the general increase in communications exerted a driving force in thedirection of language reform. Thus the first time the practice of teaching" bid.19 Aless io Bombaci, Storio della Lellerafuro Turca (Milan: Nuava Accademia Editrice, 195 6), 42250 Rustow. "Modernization of Turkey," 108-9." Bombaci, Lelferolura Turca,422.Jierkes, Doelopmen1 ofSenrlorirm in Turkey, 194." Shaw and Shaw. History of the Ottoman Empire, 120.


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Turkish by using Arabic grammars was abandoned was in 1846. In thatycar a professor at the Imperial Miliury College had to compose a Turkishgrammar because military science did not lend itself to the use of theintricate and overloaded Ottoman of the time."The complexity of the Ottoman language of this period, loaded down as it was withArabic and Persian vocabulary and conskuctions, soon became an obstacle to modemcommunications.

TheOttoman TurkishLanguage

A thousand years ago "most of the ancestors of the present Turks of Turkey had becomeMuslim," and their use of Persian tcrms for such basic religious concepts as "prophet"beygamber) indicates that they were introduced ro Islam by "peoples of Iranianspeech."" In the centuries that followed, large amounts of vocabulary were borrowedfrom both Persian and Arabic, though the influx of Arabic words was the larger of rhetwo. Nut only was Arabic thc language of religion, but a large amount of Persianvocabulary had originally been bnrrowed fiom Arabic, and it is possible that many Arabicwords entered Turkish by way of Persian. What's more. "when an Arabic word wasborrowed it brought its whole family with it."56 That is to say, when an Arabic word wasbomwcd into Turkish, it was borrowed along with the whole "fami1y"of words that werederived from the same Arabic root. And with each new foreign word that was borrowedinto the Turkish language, "the corresponding Turkish word was forgotten or became

"Mardin, Genesis of Young Olfom on llorrg ht, 228."G. ewis,TurkishLonguagoReform, 5 ." bid..6.


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restricted to the speech of the comm on peop le."J7

Not only was a large amount of Arabic and Persian vocabulary borrowed into Turkish,but Persian and A rabic gramm atical rules were also adopted. W hile Turkish (like Persian)is "free of that disease of language known a s grammatical gender." Arabic is not, andArabic borrowings into Turkish were still made to agree with one another in gender?8Furthermore, a noun and its qualifier were connected in the P ersian manner, with the -i ofPersian izafet. For example, the name of the "New Literature" movement of the latenineteenth century is Edebiyar-r Cedide. Both words are Arabic. Since edebiyat isfeminine, cedid is used in its feminine form, cedide. The two words are then connected inthe Persian fashion, with the adjective following the noun and connected with the - i ofizafet, and the -i of izafet is then subject to the rules of Turkish vowel hannony. Thesimpler colloquial way to say this would be Yeni Edebiyaf, with the invariable Turkishadjective preceding the noun and without the i ~ a f e t . ~ ~

Ottoman writers, especially beginning in the fifteenth century, took Persian literame astheir model and filled their works with borrowed Persian words, particularly in poetry.'0The result of all this borrowing was the creation of a literary language completelydifferent from the language of the masses. Bemard Lewis describes it as "vast expansesof contorted syntax and swollen verbiage where the thin rivulet of meaning was lost in the

" m i d ." m i d .$9mid., 7 . Th e Persian iiafcr is used to indicate that two wards are linked. Specifically, it is placed after anoun o indicate that it is qualified by the following naunor adjective. T urkish has adiffcrent way ofindicating that one naun qualifier another, aod when a noun is qualified by an adjective it does not markeither afthem."Ibid.


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trackless wilderness of w ords."61 Shortly after the F rench Revo lution, Ahmet Atlf Efendiwrote with horror of how "famous atheists" like Rousseau and Voltaire used "easilyintelligible words and phrases, in the form of mockery, in the language of the commonpeople."62 in short, writing something for mass consumption was sim ply inconceivable atthat point. The funny side of the huge gulf between the language of the court and thelanguage of the common people can be seen in the traditional shadow theater, whereHacivat speaks Ottoman and Karagoz speaks colloquial Turkish. When Karagoz fails tounderstand what Hacivat is saying, he responds with something that sounds similar ineveryday Turkish hut means som ething completely different, to comic effec t6'

While a sound knowledge of Arabic and Persian was needed to read or write OttomanTurkish, at the same time many Arabic and Persian words entered the speech of thecommon people and were completely assimilated, in some cases becoming almostunrecognizable or taking on new meanings. For people educated in the classical traditionthese galatat-1 meshure, or mistakes consecrated by usage, were considered vulgar andi n c ~ r r e c t . ~his served to further differentiate the language of the elite from the languageof the masses.

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries there was a short-lived movem ent to w rite poetryin "plain Turkish" (Tiirki-i basit), but it had no lasting effects.65The P ersian influence onOttoman literature declined somewhat in the eighteenth century, but the situation did not

*' B . Lewis, Emergmce ofModern Turke.~,26 ," bid., 66 ." G. ewis, Turkish LonguageReform, 8 .e4 Heyd, Language Reform in Modern Turkey, 10-1.65 G. ewis, Turkirh Language R e f m , 12 .


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begin to change significantly until the Taminrut period in the nineteenth century whenprinted books became more commonplace and the first Turkish newspapers appeared."However, an important early step towards simplification was taken by Akif Pa$a, whoearlier in the nineteenth century stopped using the old chancery style and contributed to'the development of a simpler and more direct prose style better suited to the needs of amodem state."67

With their conversion to Islam, the Turks also began using the Arabic script. When thePersians convened to Islam and adopted the Arabic script, they added several newcharacters to represent the Persian sounds that did not exist in Arabic. With the additionof these extra characters, the Arabo-Persian script was capable of representing all theconson ants of Persian, an d also of Turkish. However, Arabic h as a number of sounds thatare alien to both Persian and Turkish. When Persians and Turks borrowed words 'omArabic, they retained the original Arabic spelling, complete with characters that were theneither not pronounced or else were assimilated to the nearest equivalent in Persian orTurkish, at least in the spe ech of the comm on people. Thus, j ,j LG= , nd A wouldall he pronounced z, while in Arabic they represent four distinct sounds. Conversely, theArabic A was used to represent Turkish g, k, n, ory. In Arabic it represents k, while thePersian variant -1 to represent g was often winen without the distinguishing upper

stroke. The n represented by A was originally lngl as in English singer, ut it graduallycame to be pronounced like a normal n.68 This sound could also be represented by a

'd Davison,Reform in the Ortoman Empire, 176.a7 6 .Lewis, Emergence of Modern Turkey, 105,429.'%. Lewis, Turkish Language Reform, 27.


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different modified form of A . ut again the distinguishing strokes were normally leftThe main problem, however, was with the vowels. Arabic has only three vowel sounds,but with long and short versions of each. The long vowels are written while the shortvowels usually are not, though there are diacritical marks that can be used to indicate theshort vowels if necessary. Persian has six vowels and these are indicated using thestandard Arabic characters, meaning that the three Persian vowels that are represented bythe Arabic diacritical vowel markers are normally not written. This can som etimes lead toambiguity. In Turkish the situation is even worse, since Turkish has eight vowels. Vowelswere often not w ritten, or else only som e of the vowels in a word were w ritten, and eventhen there wa s often a considerable degree of ambiguity. The Arabo-Persian script simplywas not equipped to deal with Turkish vowels, and solving this problem would requirethe creation of new characters, or at least of new diacritical marks. So along with therapid rise of Turkish publishing in the nineteenth century, Onom an intellectuals began toturn their attention to the problem of modifying the script to better reflect the sounds ofthe Turkish language.

The Rise ofTurkishBook Publishing

Books were printed in the Ottoman Empire as early as the 1490s, when Jews who hadfled Spain set up presses in Istmb ul and S alonica. An Armenian press was set up in 1567with equipment brought from Italy, and in 1627 Nicomedus Metaxas purchased a press


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from London and began printing books in Greek. However, there were no Turhish booksprinted until ibrahim M tlteferrika (l670?-1745) set up his press in 1729." ~

A total of approximately 180 Turkish books were published in the period from 1729 to1830. Ottoman printed books then began appearing regularly in the 1830s, and "literaryworks, especially the Divans, were made accessible to a larger public, hitheno unable tobuy the cost ly manus~r i~ts ." '~n the eighteenth century, translation efforts had beenfocused not only on western military texts, but also on the "most popular 'classics' ofOttoman and earlier Islamic culture," and in the nineteenth century this "culminated in areal flowering of translations from the Arabic and the ~ers ian .""

The Takvimhane-i amire, a printing house founded in 1831 to publish the officialnewspaper Takvim-i Vekayi, also printed books, and beginning in 1840 anyone could payto have a book printed there. M ore publishing houses were opened in the 1830s, 40s and50%many o f which printed textbooks for use in the growing number of schools. Also. in1847 the state began publishing an official yearbook, or ~ a l n a m e ? ~

Along with the rise in literacy brought about by the new secular schools of the Tanzimat"innumerable public and private Onoman presses and publishing houses were establishedin Istanbul and the other major cities, producing almost 3000 books during the next half-

69 Sclim NUrhct Gercck. Tirrk Matboacr lrgr, vol. I , Mirteferrika Matbaarr (Istanbul: Dcvlet Ban mcvi.1939), 26-30,60 .'"ale Baysal. "Turkish Publishing Activi ties before and after the New Alphabet." Anatoiico 8 (1981): 117,122. Divan refcrs o a collection of p o w , spec if ically of classica l Ottoman poetry."Mardin, Genesis of YoungOnoman Thought, 203.'' Server R. Iskit, TCirkrYedeNesriyotHaaeketleri TmihineEtaBokq (Istanbul: Dcvlet Basunevi, 1939), 29-30, 34,38.


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Improvements to the copyright laws in 1857 also led to an increase in thenumber of publishe rs and publications,7' and publishin g activity continued to g row as thecentury went by, with an estimated 3,200 books published in the much shorter periodfrom 1876 to 1890.'~ B y 1883 there were 54 publish ing houses in Istanbul alone.76

Along with the rise in publishing activity, the Turks began to take more of an interest intheir o m anguage. In 1851 the Kavaid-i Osmaniye (Ottoman Rules) of Ahmet CevdetP q a (1825-1895) and Fuat P a p (1815-1868) was published. This book was actually oneof the handful of books prepared for the Encumen-; Dan&, and certainly the mostsignificant. It was "'the first Turkish work on Twkish grammar to he printed, and alandmark in the linguistic reform."" The 1875 edition was renamed Kavaid-i Tiirkiye,butthe first grammar wi tt e n by a Turk to actually refer to the language as Turkish was theIlm-i Sarf-i Tiirki of Siileyman Hiisnii P a ~ a d. 1892), published in 1874. Anothergrammar of this period, that of Abdullah Ramiz P q a , was published in 1868 and entitledLisan-1 Osmanihin Kaoaidini H6vi Emxile-i Turki (Paradigms of Turkish, Containing theRules of the Ottoman ~ang ua ge) ."

The Kavaid-i Osmaniye was partly inspired by the Grammar of the Turkish Language byArthur Lumley Davids, published in London in 1832. Davids' book was also influentialbecause of its long historical introduction on the Turkish peoples, an example of how.Ew opean T wco logy helped reacquaint Ottoman Turks with their "forgotten and rejected"'I Shaw and Shaw, History of fhe Ono!rrnr~ mpire. 128" skit, Twkiyede Ne~riyarHorekefleri.5 0 475 Baysal, "Turkish Publishing," 118." skit, TarkiyiyedeNe&o,at Horekderi. 97 ." B. Lewis, Emergence ofModern Twkey. 1 18.''G . Lewis, Turkish Languqe Reform. 16.


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pre-Islamic h i s to ~ y .' ~ French edition of this book w as published a few years after theoriginal English edition, and the author's sympathetic discussion of "the past glories ofthe Turks" would later have a great influence on one of the Young Ottomans, Ali ~ u a v i . ~ '

Another imponant book was Mustafa Celaleddin's Les Turcs anciens t t modernes,wrinen in French and published in Istanbul in 1869. Mustafa Celaleddin was actually aTurcophile, Russophobe Pole, born Konstanty Polkoz ic-Borq cki, who had fled his nativcland and joined the Ottoman m y . In his book, he tried to show that the Turks wereracially and linguistically related to h e Europeans, developing "an early kind of Turkishnationalism, hased on historical and linguistic argument."81

A s early a s the 1850s authors such as Ahmet C evdet Pa$a began writing in a simpler andmore modem style, though without making much progress in using Turkish rather thanArabic or Persian words. By the 1860s it was evident that tastes had changed, and clarityof expression was given more weight than previously. There were fewer instances ofsentenccs that lasted Tor sew ral pages, and there wa s also more regu larity in spelling andpunctuation?2

Another important dev elopn~ entwas the translation of European literature. which beganin earnest in 1859 when ibrahim Sinasi (1821-1871) published a book of French poetryand Mehm et Miinif P q a (1828-1910) published a selection of dialogues by Voltaire,

m 8 .Lewis. Emergence ojModem T u r k , 345-6.Mardin, Generis of YoungOrrvrnvnThuughr,250.'' Davixm,Refwm in the Ommon Empmpirr,23 182 Ibid., 178-80.


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Fontenelle and Fenelon. Fenelon's novel Les Ave nrw es de Tdldrnaque was then translatedby Yusuf K h i l P a ~ and published in 1862.8' The translation of Tdldnraque, which hadactually begun circulating in manuscript form in 1859, was significant in that it markedan early step in the "'politicization' of intellectual productions."84 The book deals withthe path that should be taken by a just ruler, hut is written in the form of a novel

Only two o ther European novels had been translated into Turkish by 1870: Victor Hugo'sLes Misdrables in 1862 and Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe in 1864.8~However,beginning in the 1870s there were more translations of works by authors such as Vo ltaire,Lamartine and Chateauhriand. The translation movement introduced the novel and thedram a to Turkish readers, and also helped introduce new concepts such as patriotism.86

From about the middle of the [nineteenth] c e n w he spread of Westernideas and the acclimatization of Western social and political attitudesamong the Turks was greatly accelerated by the rise of a new Turkishliterature, differing both in form and in content from classical Onomanwritings. In it the literature of France had begun to replace the classics ofIran as the source of inspiration and the model for imitation?'

The Turkish novel was originated by Ahmet Midhat (1844-1912). Midhat, who exhibiteda "mastery over the popular language" in his writing, used his novels to teach andmoralize as well as to entertain, which included tackling such issues as slavery and theequality of w omen.88 In addition to being considered the father of the Turkish novel,

Bombaci, Lelreroturo Turco, 424-5.Mardin, Genesir of YoungOltomonThough!,241-2.'' e r k e s , evelopment ofSeeuiarim in Turkey, 283. Thism s l a t i o n of Robinson C m o e was acmallymade from the Arabic, according toBombaci, Letleroluro Turea, 424.''B . Lewis, Emergence ofModern Turkey, 439.'' bid., 136.88 Berkes, Dweiqpment ofSecuiarism in Turkey, 282-3.

23


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Midhat was the first Turkish writer to write European-style short stories in the 1870s.8~He also was the first writer to exam ine and critique the half-westernized Tu rk and discuss"the true meaning of Westernization" w ith his readers, something which "became one ofthe im portant factors in the T urkish awakening."90

[Midha t] utilized the narrative technique of the meddah (story teller) in themodem novel fon n. Som e of his plots were even taken over from meddahstories. Like the ancient story tellers, be conversed with his readers, askedtheir opinions about the behaviour of the characters, and answered thequestions that they were likely to ask. He kept in constant contact with hisreaders and, by doing so , encouraged them to read? '

The Birth of Turkish Journnlirm

The first newspaper to appear in the Onoman Empire was published by the FrenchEmbassy in Istanbul from 1796 to 1798, and other French newspapers were published inIzmir in the 1820s. The "first indigenous newspaper published in the Middle East"appeared in Egypt in 1828 in Turkish and Arabic, and Sultan Mahmut I1 followed up in1831 with the Monitezrr o t t ~ r n a n ? ~ Turkish version appeared later the same year underthe title Takvim-i Vekayi (Calendar of Events), and was "required reading for public~f i ic ia l s . "~ 'While this was "not a paper that could be read and understood by the man inthe street," the editor, Esad Efendi, "seems to have been the first writer to feel the needfo r sim plificatio n o f written ~ w k i s h . " ~ ~

m Bombaci,Letreroluro Turco,435.90 Berkes, Dweiopmenr ofSeculorism in Turkey,284.Ibid., 283 .q2 B. Lewis, Emergence ofModern Turkq: 94-5.ibid.w Berker, Dweiopmenr ofSeculorism in Turkey, 127.


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The first non-official newspaper to appear in Turkish was the Ceride-i Havadis (Journalof News) in 1840. Started by the English journalist William Chu rchill and passed to hisson on his death in 1864, the Ceride-i Havadis "enjoyed a virtual monopoly ofjournalismin the Turkish language" until ibrahim Sinasi and Capanzade Agah Efendi founded theTerciiman-i Ahval (Interpreter of Conditions) in 1 8 6 0 . ~ ~s its circulation grew,

the editors of the Ceride-i Havadis began to simplify the language inwhich the journal was written, gradually abandoning the cumbersomechancery style which they had previously shared with the oflicial gazette,and adopting a simpler and more direct form of language. Turkishjournalese was born in their columns.96Journalists such as M ustafa Sami, Hafiz Mi i~ fi k nd A li Ali w ould later be rememberedby the Young Ono man s as the w riters responsible for the creation of a new journalisticstyle and language '.aimed at conveying ideas rather than a t titillating the

Along with the newspapers, there is a journal from this period that deserves mention. In1861 Miinif Pa$ a, who himself had been making efforts to write in a more accessible stylein the 1850s. founded the Cemiyet-i Iinriye-yi Osmaniye (Onoman Scientific Society) andalso served as its president. The Society opened a library and offered courses to thepublic. Its journal, the Mecmua-i Funan (Journal of Sciences), appeared for several yearsbeginning in 1862. It was written in a clear, simple language that could be understood bya wider audience and served to introduce many Ottoman readers to western scientificideas.98

9, B . Lewis, Emergence of Modern Turkey, 146-7.M Ibid., 147.9, Mardin, Genesir of You ng Ottoman Though:, 257-8.rn Ibid., 229,238-9; Iskit, Tllrkiyede Nq riyo r Horekerleri, 54-7; Davison, Refirm in the Olroman Empire,


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Picking up where earlier journalists had left off, it was fbrahim $inasi who eventuallyperfected the new "journalistic" ~urkish.'~ inasi, considered the "father of Turkishjournalism," was the editor of the Tercurnan-iAhval, and in his first editorial he wrote ofthe paper's "duty to write this newspaper in a way that will easily be understood by thepublic at large."10nTercuman-i Ahval was the first non-oficia! Turkish newspaper to bepublished by Ottoman Turks, and The first newspaper of opinion in the real sense."lnl Itwas "a hothouse for Turkish ideologues," and has the distinction of being the firstnewspaper to be suspended for displeasing the Ottoman

In 1862 $inasi, "finding his freedom of expression restricted" after the government shutdown the paper for two weeks, left and founded his own newspaper, Tasvir-i Efkrjr(Illustration of The Tasvir-i Efkrir later grew more 2'outspokenly political"under the editorship of Nam~kKemal (1840-1888). while Ali Suavi's (1837-1878)Muhbir (Informer), s m e d in 1867, was even "more radical in tone and ~ on ten t." '~'Manyof the w riters for these papers fled to Europe after coming under increasing pressure fromthe government, continuing to write and publish from abroad. This group of intellectualsactive in the 1860s and 1870s, though they were far from being a homogeneous group,became know n collectively as the Yeni Osmanlrlar, or in English as the Young Onomans.Serif Mardin describes them as the "earliest modem Turkish intc~ligentsia."'~'Theyoriginally organized as a secret society, the Young Ottoman Society, which was founded

99 Mardin. Genesis qfYoung Olromm TI8oughr.257.IM G. Lcwis, TurkishLonguogeReform. 12-3.101Berkes, Development ofSeeulorism in Turke): 197.102 Mardin, Genesis of Young Ottoman Thoughl, 259.,IB.Lewis, Emergence ofModern T h e y , 147-8.1"4 Ibid., 148-9.'" Mardin, Genesis of Young Onomon Thought,9.


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in 1865 .t06 The first Turk ish press law was implemented a t the beginning of that sameyear, as the government grcw more concerned with reigning in the growing andincreasingly vigorous press.tD7

Concerning the effects of the rise of Turkish journalism from the 1860s on. Kemal Karpatwrites:

The press, which aimed at reaching large audiences in order to educatethem first in the ways o f "civilization," and then orient them towardopposition to the government, used a simplified language that could beunderstood by the local masses. In many ways the first seeds of separationas well as of nationalism among some Muslims can he found in thelinguistic differences sharpened by increased communication. The Arabnewspapers used Arabic in order to reach their audience; the Ottomanintelligentsia had to write in Turkish, addressing a Turkish audience bystriving to simplify the lang uage and to bring forth the virtues of Turkish.Inadvertently, it thereby rejected the primacy of Arabic, the language ofthe Prophet. Concomitant with this development, the concept of aterritorial state... and the idea of seeing lhe motherland as synonymouswith the state made their appearances, notably in ~it era tur e.'~ '

TheYoungOttomans

Some of the more important Young Ottoman intellectuals were ihrahitn $inasi, Ziya Pa$a(1825-1880), Ali Suavi, and Namih Kemal. Sinasi's journal Tasvir-i Efkar, which hebegan publishing and editing in 1862, played a very important role in Ottomanintellectual life during this period .t09 Serif Mardin writes that "the prestige of the Tasvir-iEfi& reached a peak as a result of the fame Sinasi gained from a full-fledged battle106 Shaw and Shaw,Hirrory o fth e Onomon Empire, 13 1lo' B. Lewis, Emergence qfModern Turkey, 149.108 Karpat, Social Foundations o fNd ona lism , 103.lo' . Lewis, Emergence gfModern Turkey. 137.


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against the partisans of classical Turkish Nam ik Kem al came under Sinasi'sinfluence and began working with him on Tasvir-i Efkrir, first as a translator and later asan essayist. He became the editor in 1865 when $inasi fled to France, and he himself fledto Europe in 1867 along with Ziya and the other Young Ottomans when his writingscreated problems with the authorities."'

The Young Ottoman newspaper Hurriyet (Liberty) first appeared in London in 1868, andboth Namk Kemal and Ziya P a ~ a ere closely involved in its publication. The first issuebegan with the two major themes of the Young Ottomans, O ttoman pamotism and "a pleafor consultative and representative The Young Ottomans believed that aconstitution was needed to protect the individual from the tyranny of the government. Inaddition, they thought that participation in an Ottoman parliament would promoteOnoman patriotism among the different groups in the empire and at the same time"provide a harmless outlet for national feelings" by giving these groups a voice in

The constitutional movement hoped to see their plans carried out whenMurat, the heir-apparent, became sultan."' They had prob lems with the increasinglyautocratic Sultan Abdiilaziz (1861-1876). and wished to see him replaced by a n e w sultanwho would be more am enable to their plans.

N a m ~ kKemal is "best known in Turkey as the apostle of two ideas: freedom and

'lo Mardin, Genesis o/Young Ollomon Thought,262."' B . Lewis, Emergence of Modern Turkey, 141."'Ibid., 154-5."' haw and Shaw, Histor). ofthe Onoman Empire, 132,,a Davison, Reform in the Otlomon Empire, 300.


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fatherland.""' His patriotic play Varan yahuf Silisfre (Fatherland or Silistria), firstproduced in 1873. "aroused such dangerous en thusiasms that the author was imprisonedin Cyprus, where he remained for over three years," and much of the rest of his life wasspent in exile or in prison."b The auth orities did no t look favorably on the idea of loyaltydirected not towards the Sultan or the Islamic community, but towards "an abstract andunfam iliar entity called the ath her land.""'

While the Young Ottomans did not break with the Onomanism of the Taximat, theywere critical of its secularism. In their view the Tanzimar reforms represented aconcession to the western powers, and they were also critical of the fact that the reformswere not limited by the Seriat (Islamic law)."' N a m ~ kKemal criticized the Tanzimar forits separation of state and religion, which in his view "not only damaged the religiousfoundation of the state but also cleared the way for European interference" on b e M f ofthe non-Muslim millets.119Namlk Kemal was "a sincere and devoted Muslim, and theFatherland of which he speaks, though he uses a term denoting territory and notcommunity. is lslamic no less than Ottoman."lm In fact, Mardin writes that "the YoungOttomans 'invented' pan- slami ism."'^' While "an amorphous proto-Pan-Islamism had forsom e time been implicit in the Young On om an position," it was after their return fromexile that the idea o f Islamic union be cam e more exp licit in their discussions, for example

111 8. Lewis. Emergence of Modern Turkey, 141I Ie I h i A.U."."'bid . . 158."'Mardin, Generir of Young Ottoma n Thought, 163-4"' erkcr, Development qlSeculorism in Turkey,217.110 B. Lewis, Emergence @Modern Turkey, 141.2."' Mardin. Genesir of Young Ottomo n Thought, 60 .


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in N a m ~ k emal's 1872 writings in the newspaper I b m (~dmoni t ion) ." '

Both Sinasi and Namik Kemal were influenced by the romantic ideal of having aliterature that was oriented towards the people, and they were amon g the first writers whobegan to see the en ormous g ap between the literary language and the spoken language asa problem . Sinasi, in a verse translation of a La Fontaine fable, declared that he was using.'the language of the common people" (l imn-i ~v a r n ) , ' ~ 'nd he experimented in writingpoetry using only Turkish word^.'^' N a m ~ k emal went even further than Sinasi or MiinifPa$a in using the vernacular to reach a wider audience.12' Still, while Namlk Kemal wasworried about the conflicting Arabic, Persian and Turkish elements in the literarylanguage. he was not always faithful to the idea of writing in a more natural colloquialstyle.'26

Ziya Pa$a educated himself by studying the Persian masters, and be later worked in thecourt where he learned French and made several translations. He was critical of both theflowery old Ottoman style and of the complex bureaucratic language of his time, but ingeneral he was happy with the " th e e oceans" (Arabic, Persian and Turkish) that made upthe Ottoman language.'" In a famous article which appeared in Hurriyer in 1868 entitled"Sir ve inga" (Poetry and Prose), Ziya "destroys the Turkish classical style ascumbersome, complicated, and a means of keeping the people in s~bservience.""~

,n Ibid., 61."'Bombaci, Leneroturo Turco, 426 , 4 33 ."' avison, Re/orm in the Onomon Empire, 184.Mardin, Genesis of Young Ottoman Tkotzghl,283.lZ6 Bombaci,Leneraturo Turca,433.''' hid. , 427-8.433,,2& Mardin, Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought,340.


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How ever, he w as not alway s consistent in his writings and som etimes seemed to hold theopposite point of view.

While many of the Young Ottomans wrote about the language problem, about the need towrite in a style that people could understand or about the problems involved in using alanguage that borrowed so heavily from other languages, much of what they wrote wasstill full of Persian izafef constructions and difficult Arabic and Persian vocabulary.Geoffrey Lewis points ou t a general trend stretching to the end o f the century, where eventhough "the new newspapers and magazines frequently carried articles urging the use ofsimple Turkish, they tended to urge it in very complicated language."'29 The writers ofthis period could not escape the fact that they had been brought up on the old divanliterature, and though the language they used and developed was different From the old, itwas still very far from the spoken language.11o

One of the first people to advocate using Turkish words instead of their A rabic or Persianequivalents was Ali Suavi. He "spoke out against calling the language O ttoman.' and alsoproved himself capable of writing without the Persian izafer."' He was against usingArabic and Persian grammatical forms in Turkish, and favored forming the plurals ofArabic words with the regular Turkish plural suffix instead of using the irregular Arabicbroken plural, for example dlimler instead of ulemd.'" Ali Suavi broke with the YoungOttomans in 1868, and following the closu re of Muhbir, which he had continued

G . Lewis, TurkishLanguage Reform, 13, 15.'O Levend, Tiirk Dil inde G e li p e , 84 ."' G . Lewis, TurkishLangvoge Reform, 14-5."' usuf Ziya h O z . Turk ~en in odelqme Tarihi: Genq Kalemler ue Ym i Limn Hweketi (Ankara:YuksekagretimK m l u Matbaasl, 1995). 23.

3 1


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publishing in London, he moved to France where he continued writing and publishing onhis own. "It was at this period that he began to express, for the first time, the idea of aTurkish as distinct from an Islamic or Ottoman loyalty.""' Still, Serif Mardin writes thatAli Suavi "was still too much interested in all of his Islamic brethren to be labeled a'Turkist' although 'Turks' were given greater importance in his writings thanhe~eto fo re . ""~

In his personal letters written in 1878, Namlk Kemal wrote of the need to "annihilate alllanguages in our country except ~wkish.""~While he recognized the impossibility ofaccom plishing this with Greeks or Bulgarians, he believed that the Muslim Albanians andLazes could be assimilated by teaching them Turkish in school.'J6 While Turkishnationalism only developed later on, the Ottoman patriotism of the Young Ottomans wasin many ways an early step in that direction.

Early Efforts at ScriptReform

Starting in the middle of the nineteenth century_various intellectuals proposed modifyingthe Arabic script to better reflect the sounds of Turkish. For some, the huge gap betweenthe written language and the spoken language of the masses could be boiled down to thequestion of literacy, and script reform was seen as a way to promote literacy."'

"' . Lewis, Emergence of Modern Turkey, 154-5.134 Mardin, Genes* @You ng Orromon Thought, 372.13' Arai, Turkish N arionolism, 3.'16 lbid."' erker. Dwelopmenr o/Seculansm in Turkey. 195


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Proponents of reformin g the Arabic script to better suit the Turkish languag e often startedby looking at J , letter that could stan d for the five sounds now represen ted by o, d, u, u,and v in the new alphabet. Reform ers usually suggested placing various sig ns above the Jto remed y the ambiguity.

The belief that the script should he modified or reformed was expressed for perhaps thefirst time by Ahmet Cevdet Pa$a in 1851, though in the early nineteenth century thecalligraphe r Mustafa Rakim Efendi had reportedly proposed a "new. simplified system of

In their I851 grammar hook Kavaid-i Osmaniye, A h e t Cevdet P q a andFuat P q a "employed two diacritical marks to show accurately some of the vowelsound^.""^ They also devised a simplified script and ''used it to increase the speed of

read ing among elementary school s ~ d e n t s . " ' ~ ~

The Encumen-i Danif devised a system for indicating the vowels that was used in thesalnames for a few years beginning in 1854. In this system, a small numeral seven oreight (V or A ) was placed either above or below the J to indicate which of the fourpossible vowels it stood for. while other diacritical marks were used to differentiate afrom e and r from i. So for example OF (revenge) could now be distinguished from iiq(three) by writing them and EJ"' respectively, whereas without the diacriticalmark s the two word s would be written identically.'''

"' ardin, Genesis4fYoung Ollamon Thought,264.Mardin doer not give any funher details, nor docs heive !he date.'' ~ v h o n .Reform in fhe OrrornonEmpire, 179.I4 0 Mardin. GenesisofYoung Orloman Thoughr, 264."' Irkit, Turkiyede Nqriyal Horekederi, 330-1.


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Later on. in a May 1862 address to the Ottoman Scientific Society, Mihif Pa$a proposedtwo different ways the script could be modified. The first was to introduce five additionaldiacritical marks which, together with the three that already existed, would allow thescript to represent all eight Turkish vowels. The second and more radical possibility wasto write each character separately, including the five new diacritics which would also bew in en on the line as full character^."^ Miinif Pa$a also reportedly "harbored thoughts o fgiving up the A rabic alp habet altogether.""'

Another proposal in this period was that of Fath-Ali Ahundzade (1811-1878), anAzerbaijani dramatist and political scientist who, during an 1863 visit to Istanbul,suggested adding several new characters to represent the vowels. The Ottoman ScientificSociety considered and rejected his proposal.'4' Follow ing the rejection of his proposal,he also reported ly "w as w illing to ado pt the Latin alphabet..'"'

The impetus for these early proposals for script reform originated with the belief that theinadequacies of the Arabic script were to blame for the low level of literacy among theOnoman Turks. As the issue grew into a public controversy in 1869, Namk Kemalpointed out that the literacy rate in England and the United States was very high despitethe irregularities of English spelling, while the Spaniards with their phonetic alphabet hada much lower literacy rate. In the end. he believed that the practical difficulties involved

"' . Lewis, Turkijh Language Reform, 2 8 ."I Davimn,Reform in the Onomon Empire, 179.'*G . Lewis, TurkishLanguageRqform, 28.111 Davison, Reform in the Ottoman Empire, 179.


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in changing the script would be too great. Later on, in a letter winen in 1878, headvocated mod ifying the Arabic script but not abando ning it.146

All of the issues which were discussed by the Young Ottomans and their generationwould continue to be discussed in the following decades as well, as the ranks of theintelligentsia grew and the Turkish press continued to develop.

"' . Lewis, Emergence ofModern Turkey,428.


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CHAPTER TWOTHE REIGN OF A B D ~ H A M ~ '1

The FirstConstitutional Period

The constitution that the Y oung Ottom ans had long agitated for finally becam e a reality in1876. Sultan Abdiilaziz was deposed on May 30. 1876 and Prince Murat became Su ltanMurat V. On June 4, Abdiilaziz was found dead in his apartment, and while it wasapparently a suicide there were ru mors that he had been assassinated to prevent his returnto the throne. Murat was already of fragile mental health, and now his condition greweven worse. H e was deposed on September 1, an d AbdtiLhamit 11(1876-1909) became thenew sultan."' The Ottoman Constitution, which was drafted the same year, waspromulgated on December 23, 1876. This was just a few days after Midhat Pa$a, thedriving force behind the implementation of the Constitution, was reappointed GrandViz ie r hy ~ b d i i 1 h a m i t . l~ ~

I4 1 Shaw and Shaw, H i m y ofrhe Orroman Empir e, 163-7."' . Lewis, Emergence ofModern Turkey, 164.


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The 1876 Constitution made Turkish the official language and referred to it as Turkish,not o no man."^ It also made Onomanism ? h e official policy of the em pire, embodyingthe concept of equality contributed by the Tanzimat and endeavoring to eliminate theseparatism of the millet system."150 In the Ottoman Parliament, Christians w ere actuallybetter represented than Muslims when one looks at the ratio of deputies to population,with 44 Christian deputies and 71 Muslim deputies. Even the tiny Jewish minority had 4deputies i n the ~ a r l i a m e n t . ~ ~ 'his Ottoman equality was however limited by thequalification that deputies had to know Turkish, which merely meant that they had tospeak the official language. At the end of four years they would also have to be able toread Turkish and, "as far as possible," to write it .I5'

Sultan Abdiilhamit ultimately dissolved the Ottoman Parliament and suspended theConstitution on February 14, 1878. This was facilitated by the Russian war of 1877-1878.'" Concerning the fallout from the entire constitutional experience, Serif Mardinwrites that

the most important result of [t he Young Ottoman] propagandistic effortswas not so much the proclamation of the Ottoman constitution as theestablishment o f the belief that S ultan Abdiilhamid had perpetrated a crimein suspending it. It is this belief, which would not have been widely heldbefore the appearance of the Young Ottomans, which fed the undergroundopposition to the sultan between 1878 and 190 8.'~ "Sultan Abdiilhamit's rule grew increasingly autocratic, lasting for over thirty years. TheOttom an Constitution would not be reinstated until the revolution of 1908."* G. Lewis, Turkish Language Reform, 16.110 Shaw and Shaw, Histow of the Ottoman Empire, 177."' h i d 1 x 1...IJi Davison,Reform in the OttomanEmpire, 388 ."' . Lewis, Emergence of Modern Turkey, 69 ."'Mardin, Genesis of Yo m g Onoman %ought, 403.


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Islamism nnd Pnn-Iahmism

Under Abdijlhamit. Islamism became the "most widespread ideological force in theOnoman ~ m ~ i r e . " ' ' ~t was used as "an ideological weapon ... to counte r the imperialismof the Western powers as well as the minority nationalist movement^.""^ in fact, thisemphasis on Islamism and on the Caliphate had begun under Ab diilazb, but it was morefully realized under AbdUlbamit and is often closely associated w ith his long reign.I5'

In the 1870s, Ottom an Turks grew more interested in the plight of other Turkic peoples asRussia made advances in Central Asia. While Pan-Turkism would only develop later on,wncerns about Central Asia gave rise to "a political Russophobia and an emphasis onIslam which more and more verged on pan-Islamic ~entiment."'~~an-lslamism at thispoint developed in response to Pan-Slavism and European imperialism, and on aninternational scale it represented merely "a futile search for military aid and a sentimentalattachm ent to the concept of the caliphate."lS9 However, within the Ottom an Empire itcontributed to "a so rt of Islamic patriotism" coupled with rising anti-European sentiment,and Ottom an diplomacy grew "more unyielding than it had previously been."lGO

155 Shaw an d Shaw, Hislory o f the Onoman Empire, 259.I" l h d 760...,5 7 B. Lewis. Emergence ofhfddern Turkey, 123-4.,,.Davison, Reform in the ONomon Empiie, 274 .1,9 Ibid., 275.7.16" Ibid.. 277.


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Abdiilhamit simply t w k advantage of the Pan-Islamic sentiment that already existedamong his Muslim subjects, using it to "strengthen his hand against enemies both at homeand abroad."16' Starting with the idea that the Onom an state was predominantly M uslimand that the dominant culture was Islamic, he "began to identify himself uith thereligious sentiments and political aspirations of Muslims throughout the world by m akingwide use of his title a s ~ a l i ~ h . " ' ~ 'he Arabic language also gained prominence "as alanguage of culture and even administration." though it was never officially made into asecond official language alongside Onoman ~urkish.'" Still, though this period therewas increased borrowing from Arabic into Turkish. both of words and exp ressions."

Hamidinn ReformamdContinued Modernization

Binnaz Toprak writes that 'Ottoman intellectual history o i th e 19' centmy is the historyof rwo conflicting viewpoints, one of which saw Westem superiority only in technicalterms while the other saw a necessity to embrace Western culture a s well....Modernization in the Turkish context has always been synonymous with~ e s t e m i z a t i o n . " ' ~ ~he conflict then was between Islamists on the one hand andWestemizers on the other. While it is true that there was a renewed emphasis on Arabicand Islamic culture during the reign of Abdulhamit 11, at the same time he continued theprocess of modernization that had begun under his predecessors.

"' Shaw and Shaw, Hislory of th e OIloman Empire, 259.lU K q a t , Social Foundations offiolionnlism, 107.1- Shew and Shaw. Hi~ lor y frhe Oaomun Empire, 260.1 Karpat. SoeialFoundofionr of Nationalism. 107."'Binnaz Toprak, lslam und Polilical Developmen1 in T w k q Leiden: E. J. Brill, 19811, 58.

39


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Some of the greatest achievements of the Hamidian era were in the field of education.The Mulkiye school for training civil servants and the Harbiye war college were bothexpanded, and Abdiilhamit opened eighteen more schools of professional and highereducation. More rqdiye schools were opened, including separate military rii~diyes.Andthe DariiIfiin~rn niversity, later known as the University of lstanbul, was finally openedin 1900. Also during Abdulhamit's reign the Galatasaray lycde "became more Turkish incharacter," educating the newer generations of the Turkish in the end,Abdillhamit's educational system served to educate the people who would later challengehis authority and eventually bring an end to his reign. As early as 1876, the newgeneration in the military schools was being raised on Young Ottoman li te ra tu ~e .'~ '

Censorship and Opposition

The censorship that had led the Young Ottomans to flee to Europe in the 1860s wasfurther expanded under Abdiilhamit. The Istanbul newspapers were a great annoyance tothe sultan, and in 1877 he ordered the writing of a press law to limit the freedom theybelieved they had under the new constituti~n. '~~here were many words w hose use wassimply not allowed. including "constitution," "assassination," and " ~ u r a t . " ' ~ ~ournalistswere forced to resort to lengthy paraphrasing to report on matters such as the repairs tothe Muradiye mosque in Bursa in 1904, and attributed the deaths of assassinated166 B. Lewis, Emergencs ofModern Turkey, 181-3.I Mardin,Genesis ofYoung Onoman Thought, 404.168 Davison.Reform in the Onomon Empire, 396-7.'" Shaw and Shaw, History oft he Ottom an Empire, 251


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monarchs to more benign causes such as indigestion.'70 At the same time, publishingactivity continued to increase during this period. According to B ernard Lewis,

Even the emasculated and ineffectual newspapers of the Hamidian era...made some contribution to the modemi&ttion of Turkey, if only byincreasina their numbers and readershiv and thus accustomine more Twks- -to the European habit of reading the news every day. No less importantthan the newspapers were the periodicals and books that were issuing ingrowing numbers from the printing houses, to satisfy -an d again arouse -the appetites of the new literate ~l a s s e s ." ~

Ahmet Midhat, who had earlier had problems with the censors and been exiled to Rhodes.returned to Istanbul following Abdiilhamit's accession and gained the favor of the newsultan. Deciding that "his function in life was educating lhe masses, not stirring them torevolution," he continued writing during the remainder of the Hamidian period andfounded the new spaper Tercdman-I Hakikaf (Interpreter of the Truth) in 1878 withfinancial help from the According to one estimate, the literacy rate tripled in thelast quarter of the nineteenth century. Newspaper publishing became profitable, andwhere earlier journalists of the Taminrat era had been part-time dabblers, a new class ofprofessional journalists w as now rapidly ern e~ gi ng ." ~

The deposed Sultan Murat still had his supporters in the H amidian era, and as the yearswent by there was growing opposition to Sultan Abdiilhamit. Ali Suavi met his end in anearly attempt to restore Murat to the throne on May 20, 1878."' Various oppositiongroups began to form later on in the late 1880s, both secret societies inside the empire andn o Selim NUzhet G er~ ek , urk Gaeleciligi: Yiiromii YzI Ddniimii I'esilesile (Istanbul: D evle t Matbaast,1931). 77-8.171 B. Lewis, Emergence o Modern Turkey, 88.172 Shaw and Shaw, Hislory o the Ollomon Empire, 252."' . Lewis, Emergence o Modern Turkey, 62.174 Ibid., 176.


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exile groups in Europe and Egypt. They came to be known collectively as the YoungTurks from the title of a newsletter published by one of their number in Paris, La Jeune~ u r ~ u i e . " 'n the 1890s .'the g rowth of Young Turk activities abroad led to the worseningof the position of the press at home," and d luing this period the "most significant andinteresting productions of Turkish journalism" were the works of the Young Turks in

At the same time, the Istanbul presscontinued to fonn its readers in new ways of thought, to inculcate, nodoubt unconsciously. European social ideas and attitudes, and to bring tothem som e notion, however garbled, of the larger, modem world of whichTurkey was now a part.'"

The censorship that prevented overt political discussion led the intellectuals of theHamidian period to turn instead to cultural and historical matters, including heateddebates on language and literature. This was an imponant step in the development of~urkism." '

Intellectual andLinguisticDwdopments

The Hamidian period witnessed an increasing number of books devoted to the languageand history of the Turks. The early stirrings of a "scientific Turkism" can be seen inworks such as the L e h ~ e - iOsmani, a dictionary of Ottoman Turkish prepared by AhmetVefik P q a (1823-1891) and published in Istanbul in 1876. In his introduction to thedictionary, the author writes about how Ottoman Turkish is a dialect of the Oguz-"' haw and Shaw,Hisrov o/rhe Olmmon Empbe. 25 5

B. Lewis. Emergenee o/Modern Turkey, 194"' bid."' ushncr, Rise 0 / 7 w k i ~ h orionalim. IS.


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language and includes a list of Turkish words that are used in Onoman Turkish. YusufA k ~ u r a ould later call Ahmet Vefik Pa$a "the first Turkist of the Ottoman ~ u r k s . " " ~Also in 1876, Siileyman Hijsnii Pa$a published a history textbook for the militarysecondary schools, entitled Tarih-i A ~ e m World History), which devoted considerablespace to the pre-I slamic h istory of the ~ u r k s . ' ~ ~

Ironically enough, some of the most important contributions to Ottoman Turkishlinguistics and to the development of Turkism in this period came from an Albaniannationalist. In the 1880s and 1890% Semseddin Sami F ra ~ er i (1850-1904) wrotenumero us newspaper articles in which h e called for an end to excessive borrowing fromArabic and proposed using instead "the discarded words of our original Eastern Turkish~ a n ~ u a g e . " ' ~ 'n the late 1890s, in the middle of a heated debate concerning thesimplification of Ottoman Turkish,

S h i explained that the disruption of traditional Ottoman was all to thegood. From the disintegration of the Onoman language would arise amodem Turkish: the nrocess of chanee would continue until wrinenTurkish was freed f i o k the yoke of &assimilated Arabic and Persianrules.182

He went on to explain that change in the language was "a reflection of the transformationoccurring in the vocabulary and mentality of the people and in literature," that this wasinevitable since the old literature was dead and was being replaced by a new literatureinfluenced by the West, and that the "new Turkish nation ... nee de d i ts o w national

ErcUmend Kuran, "The Impact of Nationalism on !he Turkish Elite in the Nineteenth Century," inBeginning$ ofModernbalion io the Middie Emf: The Nineleenth Century, cd. William R. Polk and RichardL. Chambers (Chicago: Universiryof Chi cag Prern. 1968). 1 I-?.lhid 1 I ?. ,. ."' Ibid., 113-4."' erkes, Dwelopmenl of Seculorirm in Turkey, 320.


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~ a n g u a ~ e . " ' ~ b a s e dn all this, Niyazi Berkes notes that the question o f language reformcame about "not as a nationalistic question, but as an aspect of the trend ofenlightenment," and that "secular Turkish nationalism came by way of a literary driverather than as a polit ical m o ~ e m e n t. " '~ ~

Semseddin Sami is probably best known for the large dictionary of Ottoman Turkish heprepared, the Kamw-i TI?&. Published at the turn of the century, it "reflected more thanany other work the Ottoman literary language developed by the modem writers of thenineteenth century."185The Kamus used diacritical marks to deal with the ambiguity thatcould result from the imperfect match between the Arabic characters and the sounds ofTurkish, as well as from some of the peculiarities of Turkish spelling. For example, th e edifferent marks were placed over the letter J to represent the four different vowels itcould stand for in Turkish (0, , u. u). The letter without a diacritical mark represented u,j represented o, J' stood for u , and with two dots it represented 0.Different forms of

(which normally represents k) were also used to differentiate between the severalfunctions it served in Turkish, including the standard Persian variant if , whichrepresents g.186

Semseddin Sami and his brother A bdill Bey are also responsible for the creation of a newalphabet for the Albanian language, made up of thirty-six Latin and Greek letten.

L! \"xu mJ Shju , l I ~ r r , , gl r h Or t , ,mm E ,np rd , i J)rrn4Jm Qml. A n m - , Twkitlilabul lkdam itrlbau.. I J U I ) 11 >,cunour.


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Albanian suffered from some of the same problems as did Turkish when written in theArabic script.18'

The Edebiyot-r Cedide (New Literature) movement and the journal Servet-i Funun (TheRiches of Science), under the editorship of the poet Tevfik Fikret from 1895-1901,represented a reaction against the earlier steps toward linguistic simplification.

Rejecting the tendencies towards the simplification of the language thathad appeared in the preceding period, they wrote in a style that wasdeliberately recondite and obscure, laden with learned Persian and Arabicwords and expressions, and addressed only to a highly educated dite .'s8They represented "a U-turn. .. on the road to making the written language more accessibleto the general public," and their "precious style ... repelled the common reader."'89 Notonly did they create new Persian izafer compounds on top o f those already in comm onuse, they also "liked to show how Westernized they were by using calques, literaltranslations of French expressions."190Tevfik Fikret took advantage of the differentphonetic structures of Arabic, Persian and Tu rkish in his poetry. but at the sam e time usedwestern poetic technique and style.191The style of the Edebiyot-r Cedide writers was infact so sophisticated that the censors often did not notice their symbolic criticisms ofAbdiilbamit's regime, as in Fikret's famous poem "Sis"

la' G . Lewis, Turkish Language Reform. 30 .188 B. Lewis, Emergence ofM odem Turkey, I92lbl) G. Lewis, TurkishLonguageRe/om. 18.190 iLi.4.".".191 Bombaci, Lelleratura Turca, 454 .392 Shaw and Shaw, His lov o f fh e Ortoman Empire, 255.


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FurtherDevelopments inTurkism

A new development in Turkish literature appeared at the very end of the nineteenthcentury with the emergence of a "literary ~ u rk i s m ." '~ ' ollowing the Greco-Turkish warof 1897, Mehmet Emin (Yurdakul) (1869-1944) published a hook of poetry entitledTur!qe $iirler (Turkish Poems):

Abandoning the formal language and quantitative prosody of the Ottomancourt poets, [Emin] wrote in simple popular Turkish and in the syllabicmetre used in folk poetry. Still more remarkable, he adopted a word w hich,in Turkish usage, had connoted a boorish, ignorant peasant or nomad, andproudly proclaimed himself a ~ u r k .' "While Emin considered himself a Muslim first, he helped to introduce this "new conceptof identity ... into the collective self-awareness of the Turkish-speaking Ottoman~ u s l i m s . " ' ~ 'His poetry "was inspired by an ardent patriotism showing clearly thecharacteristics of nationalism," and it "aroused sympathy in favor of national literatureamon g the Turkish intellectual^."^^^

The last years of the nineteenth c en m y also witnessed an increasing number of works onTurksh history, "aimed at arousing a national consciousness among the Onoman~ u s l i m s . " ~ ~ 'his included publication of more books and articles devoted to the CentralAsian Turks, including histories, gramm ars and dictionaries. For example, just before theturn of the century Necip Aslm ( Y an ks ~ z)1861-1935) adapted Leon Cahun's 1896 bookIntroduction a I'histoire de I'Asie, which described "the heroism of the nomad Turks of

,m Kuran, "lmpact ofNationalism," 115.,wB . Lewis, Emergence ofModern T u r k q , 343"' i A196Kuran, "ImpactofNationalism," 115.19, Ibid., 113-4.


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Central Asia," and published it under the title Tiirk Tarihi (History of the ~ u r k s ) . " ~Bernard Lewis calls Necip Asm, who was greatly influenced by European Turcology,.'the f irst real T urcologist i n ~ u r k e ~ . " ' ~ ~

There was also a renewed interest in the Turkish language towards the end of thenineteenth century, mostly involving heated discussions and controversies in thenewspapers. One area of discussion was spelling, and there was a heated debate overwhether the Turks should continue to write the word Turk a s the Arabs did ( ) orshould instead be more independent and write it with the vowel ( A J ~ ) . ~ ~ "

Increased censorship at the beginning of the twentieth century put an end to suchhistorical and linguistic discussions in Istanbul. but writers in other cities continued todiscuss the problem of language. For example in Izmir, Mehmet Necip (Tiirkcii) wrote aseries of articles beginning in 1899 under the title "Tiirkqe Dilimiz" (Our TurkishLanguage), in which he suggested that spoken Turkish he used as the written language?0'Also, "By the end of the nineteenth century some, and by the First World War most,Turkish writers were making a conscious

aaron johnson- road to turkish language reform and the rise of turkish nationalism

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