Essay - Linguistics the Republic of Turkey: Language Policy and Nationalism Despite...

Linguistics

The Republic of Turkey: Language Policy and Nationalism

Despite surface appearances, many modern countries exhibit a considerable amount ***** linguistic diversity. One notable example, the Republic of Turkey, officially endorses Turkish as its national language while many minority groups within ***** territory actually speak other languages - many of them entirely unrelated to the national *****ngue. A number ***** these linguistic minorities actually represent ethnic enclaves from neighboring populations. *****mong these are the Greeks, Albanians, Serbians, Bulgarians, and so forth. Others, such as the Kurds, consist of a population that is largely geographically homogeneous, but lacks its own ***** state. Still *****s, as for example Armenian, are, or were, once fairly widely d*****persed throughout what is now ***** Turkey. According to the site, Ethnologue.com, a tot*****l ***** thirty*****six languages ***** spoken in modern *****, of which twelve (one is extinct) are found in the European portion ***** the country, while the rema*****ing are employed in Asiatic Turkey.

Turk*****h is the *****le official language of the Republic. As noted in Wikipedia, prec*****e figures on the numbers of minority language speakers ***** difficult to come by because of official government policy that does not denominate Turkish citizens according to ethnicity, race, or language *****.

***** the whole, Turkish policy of the past eighty or so years has reflected an extreme emphasis on Turkish nationalism. In ***** aftermath of the Ottom***** Empire, *****'s new ruling class devoted ********** to transforming what remained of ***** polyglot empire into a monolithic st*****te - one people, one culture, one language. For the Young Turks, this extreme form of the nation state was seen as the very essence of *****ity; its successful creation would mark the Republic of Turkey's entry into the ranks of modern and progressive nations, ***** its parity with the developed countries ***** the West. In ***** early days the new, westernizing nation-state launched an all out war against speakers of ***** *****, a newspaper in Izmir carrying the following ********** in 1928:

Citizen, do not make friends ***** or shop ***** those *****-called Turkish citizens who ***** not speak Turkish. We request from our lady citizens who work as teleph***** operators: Please immediately cut *****f conversations in Greek and Latino. (*****lan, 2007, p.245)

***** message was clear: "real" Turks did not speak anything but *****. Those who continued to speak minority languages ***** to be ostracized, social pressures accomplishing what legislation alone could not necessarily achieve. The Ot*****man Empire that had once stretched from the Balkans in Europe, to Mesopotamia in Asia, and far along the coast of North Africa *****, as a result of ***** treaty of Sevres in 1920, reduced to the Turkish states present borders. The great metropolis and imperial capital ***** Constant*****ople (***** Istanbul) at the center of a tiny *****an enclave, while ***** rest ***** the ***** stretched across the v*****t arid reaches of Asia Minor (Anatolia). The old empire's ***** had included a mix of Turks, Greeks, Armenians, Jews, Kurds, and many other nationalities. In the