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The letter Q was illegal in Turkey from 1928 until last month

lrb.co.uk

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Re: The letter Q was illegal in Turkey from 1928 until last month

#31

Post by cubancigar11 »

diorray wrote: post #24
ozgung wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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')

+1. And they're step by step trying to create jihadist Turkey just like Iran: http://img160.imageshack.us/img160/5756/77201414.jpg (before - after)

I have no idea about what is going on in Turkey or what has happened before, much less why.

That said, the image you have posted is the sort of propaganda that I saw after 9/11.

As a matter of fact, the women participating in a parade are more disciplined than the women wearing burqa out of their own conviction.

Re: The letter Q was illegal in Turkey from 1928 until last month

#32

Post by diorray »

vidarh wrote: post #30
diorray wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

http://www.idefix.com/kitap/avesta-yayinlari-kurtce-kitaplar... Does it look like books that contain those letters are banned?

Re: The letter Q was illegal in Turkey from 1928 until last month

#33

Post by vidarh »

diorray wrote: post #24
ozgung wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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')

+1. And they're step by step trying to create jihadist Turkey just like Iran: http://img160.imageshack.us/img160/5756/77201414.jpg (before - after)

Notice how the comment you are replying to is contradicting you by implying that the Kurdish alphabet and language is not legalised.

Re: The letter Q was illegal in Turkey from 1928 until last month

#34

Post by diorray »

beloch wrote: post #19

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 r…

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is that you?

Re: The letter Q was illegal in Turkey from 1928 until last month

#35

Post by vidarh »

beloch wrote: post #19

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 r…

> 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.

Re: The letter Q was illegal in Turkey from 1928 until last month

#36

Post by vidarh »

diorray wrote: post #32
vidarh wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

http://www.idefix.com/kitap/avesta-yayinlari-kurtce-kitaplar... Does it look like books that contain those letters are banned?

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.

EDIT: Here's a document from the Council of Europe's website: European Commission against Racism and Intolerance - ECRI Report on Turkey (2010/2011): http://www.coe.int/t/dghl/monitoring/ecri/Country-by-country...

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).

Re: The letter Q was illegal in Turkey from 1928 until last month

#37

Post by ozgung »

egeozcan wrote: post #22
unwind wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have some Häagen-Dazs if you really think using "the wrong letters" is illegal in the US.

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.

There is even a W Hotel at the hearth of Istanbul: http://www.wistanbul.com.tr/en/gallery/exterior

Re: The letter Q was illegal in Turkey from 1928 until last month

#39

Post by nkoren »

beloch wrote: post #19

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 r…

Apologies for making a pedantic meta-comment, but may I recommend that you read this: http://www.apostrophe.org.uk/page2.html

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.

Re: The letter Q was illegal in Turkey from 1928 until last month

#40

Post by teamonkey »

diorray wrote: post #4

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.

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.
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