The Turkish alphabet, adopted in 1928, has 29 letters and does not contain these three. When one hears about the “Turkish alphabet,” one would think it was invented by the Turks and used since time immemorial. Alas, the Turkish alphabet is an adopted version of the Latin alphabet after the addition and modification of several letters. Before this date, the Seljuk and Ottoman Turks used the Arabic alphabet with a few alterations.So the whole argument that the “Turkish alphabet” is under threat from foreign letters is nonsense because these threatening letters already existed in the Latin alphabet at the time it was Turkified by executive order of the republican elite. Like everything else, the Turkish bureaucracy denied the Kurds of Turkey the ability to use these three letters in their native tongue and made life miserable when they did.
The Kurdish language needs these letters in order to express several sounds that are part of its phonology. But strict laws and even stricter interpretations of them have put many people in prison and had them tortured for years on end just because they insisted in using them. The ban was taken to such extremes that invitations or holiday greeting cards issued by Kurdish mayors became subjects of prosecution or even their sacking (as was the case with the mayor of Diyarbakır's Sur district).
Yet in an international Turkish Language Symposium that convened in 1991 with the participation of all Turkic nations, most of them decided to adopt the Latin alphabet, including these letters, as their national alphabet. So q, w and x became Turkish letters in other Turkic countries. For example, our neighbor with which we claim to be a single nation (in two states) Azerbaijan has an (Latin) alphabet with 34 letters, including these “subversive” (!) letters. Have they betrayed their language or made it sound richer?
Under fire from the nationalist opposition on the news that the incumbent Justice and Development Party (AKP) government is considering including the letters q, w and x and diluting the Turkishness of the alphabet, the government declared that it had no intention to do so. While any foreigner or bystander would be puzzled, the nationalists and chauvinists of all sorts must be very relieved to have saved their alphabet from alien influence!
But then how shall we reconcile with the Kurds, who feel victimized and denied basic rights? A similar nationalist reflex emerged when a university (in Mardin) wanted to initiate a department of Kurdish language and literature. The issue was widely debated and looked upon favorably by the general public and academia. However, the Higher Education Board (YÖK) found this demand tantamount to voicing “separatist claims” and truncated the initiative to instead allow the teaching of “living languages.” Kurdish was not mentioned in the statement.
Once again our bureaucracy, be it academic or judicial, showed that it is not yet ready for the “opening.” This is so because they do not see themselves as free and independent academics and/or people of the law (for everyone). Instead, they see themselves as agents of the state, and their first priority is upholding the state apparatus with its existing institutions, practices and principles.
Unfortunately, they fail to grasp two things: 1) The old ways and means and the institutions that employed them so far have failed. They have produced a tutelary regime devoid of the rule of law, a nation fed on artificial (fabricated) information about itself, and hence one distanced from its past and present reality. Turkey is a relatively poor country despite many advantages that many others lack. 2) Giving rights to other groups of citizens and having them voluntarily participate in the politics of their country with their cultural identities is not subversive or divisive. The Turks will not lose what is theirs; the others will gain, too. There is no loss in this equation; on the contrary, everyone wins. But the nationalists and chauvinists of this country, just as those of any other nation, are so mentally blocked and full of fear of losing what they think is “theirs” that this has led to an unjust and authoritarian system which has alienated large chunks of people who debate the legitimacy of the system -- and that is explosive.
