Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Türkiye Okula Gidiyor
Türkiye Okula Gidiyor
Türkiye Okula Gidiyor
This Constantinople shop displays its name in Old Turkish (Arabic script) above and then
repeats its name in the recently adopted New Turkish (Latin letters). Both proclaim the fact
that this is the "New Book Store." The shop is one much frequented by Turkish schoolboys,
and its proprietor has been conducting a thriving business in the sale of new alphabets and
primers during the last few months.
TURKEY GOES TO SCHOOL
CYPRUS, " "IN THE BIRTHPLACE OF CHRISTIANITY, " ETC., IN THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
F THE pen is mightier than the sword, Cultured Americans who have lived for
In front of the highly revered tomb of summer. One such application was enough
daunted worker and peasant? it. Sweat glands were overworked last
Eyoub Ensari, standard bearer to Mo- for that officeholder. The morrow found
hammed the Conqueror when he took Con- him feverishly studying his A-B-C's.
stantinople, there is a beautifully carved
grill, bearing a wonder-working Arabic GOVERNMENT MINISTRIES ADOPT NEW
Yet few can read it and I have found none correspondence and none seems eager to
who can translate it (see illustrations, be the last. The lowliest functionary must
pages 99 and 106) know how to read and write Latin char-
The new system of writing in Turkey has affected not only the cheaper signs, but imposing
and costly brass and bronze inscriptions in Arabic script are being discarded and replaced with
names in the Latin alphabet.
zines columns or entire pages were printed On the street cars the old bilingual signs
i n Latin characters weeks in advance of i n Arabic-script Turkish and Latin-let-
the official order for their use exclusively. tered French have given way to clearer
The new alphabet was "news," not for signs in New Turkish, which is equally
amusement, but for study. easy for the foreigner to read, even if the
"d" and "t" and the "b" and "p" seem to "TELGRAf . " But such trifling matters may
be juggled somewhat and cedilla and um- soon be righted.
laut markings are added. Ten months ago the aid of several ex-
There is no " q, " no " w, " no " x " in the perts in Angora was enlisted to obtain
new alphabet adopted by the Turks. The data for the New Map of Europe being
left-hand edge of the typewriter is the prepared by the National Geographic So-
hardest hit. One does not go to the ciety, on which each nation is to have its
"Maxim" Restaurant, but to the "Mak- own place names. A partially satisfactory
sim." transliteration was the result. With the
newly adopted alphabet, however, the place
The most revolutionary change I noticed
was the "BURSA," on the name plates of names of Turkey will be standardized
Broussa automobiles, and when I asked within a few weeks.*
why, my informants assured me that In the post office my registry receipts
"BURSA" came closer to the phonetics of are now made out in legible New Turkish,
but receipts written three months ago were
the one-time capital than does the French
unintelligible not only to me, but to my
form "Broussa." Turkish-speaking assistants.
TURKISH SECTION OF NEW MAP OF EUROPE Foreign firms in Turkey have hitherto
MUST BE RELETTERED been forced to keep their books in both
Until the new dictionary appears, there * The entire Turkish section of the New Map
will be some variations. One telegraph of Europe, to be issued shortly as a supplement
with the NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE, is
office proclaims itself "TELGIRAF " ; an-
other only five minUTES away calls itsself
being relettered in accordance with these recent
forms of numerals and in two languages. the station signs. On the sides of the
Books can soon be kept in one language, Turkish cars, as well as on the Interna-
only a few Turkish trade words being tional sleeping cars, the names of the ter-
necessary for the foreigner in order to mini are marked so plainly that even he
make his records conform to Government who runs to his train may read and catch
requirements. the right one (see illustration, page 97).
Although the change is not made with To the foreigner some of the changes
an eye to the foreigner, travel for us has seem to have been made wrong end to.
become vastly simpler, and Turkey has The name on his steamer has been painted
taken on a less forbidding air, as station i n Latin characters, and the number on the
names in Arabic script disappear. funnel is the un-Arabic "Arabic" numeral,
Travelers on the Orient Express or the to which the West is accustomed. But the
Anatolian Railway were formerly forced ti me-table and the list of stops made by
to judge their position by consulting a that particular boat are still in the old
watch or a sextant. They can now read characters. Meanwhile the correspondence
of the shipping company is being done in bureaucrats from downfall. Near at hand,
the new characters, and the Turks are but facing starvation, are the seal engrav-
only awaiting the arrival of typewriters ers, whose involved inscriptions, like a
with the newly adopted Latinized key- banker's signature, are models of studied
board before business correspondence will illegibility, but who will find it hard to
become legible, if not understandable, to make even a monogram as attractive in the
all. new characters (see illustration, page 99).
PROGRESSIVE FOREIGN FIRMS WERE What the effect on Moslem art will be
CAUGHT NAPPING none can say. There are rumors that the
great decorative inscriptions by Tekhedj
One striking feature of the revolution-
ary change in alphabet was the way it Zade Ibrahim and others will be changed,
caught the foreign firms napping, so that which is a little like making over a Raphael
they now lag rather than lead. Sewing or a Michelangelo on a typewriter. Many
machines, automobiles, oil and gasoline, of the mosque inscriptions are in the Ara-
breakfast foods, and cleansers still retain bic language as well as Arabic script, and
the Arabic script in their advertising and hence have no direct relation to the pres-
on their products. An " ESSEKS" adver- ent problem.
tisement is the only one of its kind that Iconoclastic enthusiasm for the wonder-
I have so far noted. working "New Turkish," which is to
Although one moving-picture theater awaken a nation from illiteracy and back-
half-heartedly uses Arabic script for its wardness, may even touch some Arabic
titles and every week flashes a funny story i nscriptions whose beauty in a house of
in the new alphabet on its screen, thus worship has seldom been equaled and
starting such a course in concerted title never surpassed. But if one fears that, he
reading as "movie" fans have always had can go out to Stamboul's Sistine Chapel-
to endure, the cinemas have largely adopted the one-time Church of St. Saviour, now
the new alphabet (see page loo). the Kahrieh Mosque-and see Christian
The "interior," as Anatolia is called by mosaics and frescoes in an edifice rebuilt
the Constantinopolitans, is outspeeding the by Justinian. As Moslems come to prayer
former capital, and Stamboul seems to be they cross a vestibule on whose ceiling the
more affected than Pera (the European miracles of Christ are still pictured, al-
quarter), where bilingual signs in old though human figures on wall brackets
Turkish and French, English, German, or have been destroyed by iconoclasts.
Russian were common. As yet there is no indication that this
The blackboard and copy book have be- movement toward enlightenment through
come major equipment in post office, police a more easily understood alphabet will re-
station, store, and bank. But the class- sult in the destruction of art treasures
room is wider than that. Miles out from whose fame is worldwide. If the splendid
Broussa, while waiting for the CapeTown- calligraphy which so dominates Moslem
Stockholm Motor Expedition, I was asked art from ceramics to architecture now
to read an entire column printed in the ceases, existing treasures may be valued
new alphabet and was assured that what I more than ever.
ABANDONED FEZZES, VEILS
read made sense, though not to me. Cafes,
FOR WOMEN,
AND OLD ALPHABET INDICATE TUR-
ferries, and street cars are all improvised
KEY'S CHANGING VIEWPOINT
classrooms of this nation at school.
An American moving-picture man, with
a flair for the dramatic, found a group of New Turkey is definitely stepping away
turbaned Moslems studying Latin char- from other lands where the Arabic script
acters on tombstones in the English ceme- still prevails, just as she slid when she
tery. abolished the fez and tried to free women
PROFESSIONAL SCRIBES ARE ASSISTING
from the veil. But this may prove a link
BACKWARD GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS
rather than a breach. Persia and Afghan-
istan are already following the superficial
In the porch of Yeni Djami the pro- changes which Turkey recently adopted.
fessional scribes have mastered the new Second-hand Prince Alberts may find as
script and are ready to save backward wide a market as did second-hand hats and
caps when the fez was removed. Safety and night school. Having withdrawn his
razors are pushing their conquests farther capital into the heart of Anatolia, the
east on a wave of Turkish nationalism. Turk has not only retreated from the in-
Only a few years ago Turkey was nomi- trigues and indignities of the past, but has
nated as an American mandate. She is carried Western modernism-for better or
now eagerly adopting changes which no for worse-into regions little touched by
foreign tutor would dare impose, and is Occidental culture.
winning a cultural leadership far beyond Yet, in making his fight for the New
the Ottoman boundaries. Turkish alphabet, the President of Turkey
That an eastern land is now modern- invaded the foreign-language, foreign-
izing and westernizing the Near hast at a press, foreign-thinking city of the Sultans.
pace such as no Western nation or nations The tool he uses is not the sword, but the
ever set is just one of those paradoxes in pen-that and the stub of a pencil that
which history delights. Suffering from the grizzled mail messenger grips in his
no oppression psychosis, the Turks freely cramped fingers, as he sits on the lower
accept what no outsider could impose. deck on a Bosporus "chirket" and pain-
With the adoption of the New Turkish fully learns to write a script which will
alphabet, a nation is going to day school take a letter to any country in the world.