[LINK] "It’s Erdogan vs. Ataturk in a battle for Turkey’s soul"

[rfmcdonald]

Al Jazeera America's Joseph Dana notes how Erdogan's effort to reintroduce the old Ottoman Turkish language, written with a different vocabulary and in Arabic, gets to the heart of Turkey's culture wars.

With his vociferous call on Monday to elevate an older form of Turkish in the national school curriculum, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is attempting to dismantle the linguistic cornerstone on which modern Turkey was built — and challenge the legacy of its master builder. If 20th century Turkey had been modeled on the obsessively secularist “modernizing” vision of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, Erdogan has revealed the extent of his ambition to root the country’s future in the image of its imperial Ottoman past.

Erdogan’s comments came on the heels of a decision last weekend by Turkey’s National Education Council to make Ottoman language classes compulsory for the religious vocational high schools that train imams and elective for secular high schools across the country. The council’s position was widely criticized by Turkey’s secular opposition parties. But Erdogan made clear where he stands in a Dec. 8 speech in Ankara.

“Whether they want it or not, Ottoman [language] will be learned and taught in this country,” Erdogan said. “There are those who are uneasy with this country’s children learning Ottoman.”

The Ottoman language, which was abolished by Ataturk’s decree in 1928, is a predecessor to modern Turkish. It was written in Arabic script, and can still be found on monuments and buildings throughout Turkey. Added Erdogan, “They say, ‘Will we teach children how to read gravestones?’ But a history and a civilization is lying on those gravestones."

Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) have never concealed their intention to uphold traditional notions of piety and establish a regional power base that would act as a counterweight to Western influence in the Middle East and Central Asia. The government lifted a decades old ban on Muslim headscarves in state high schools in September, and Erdogan’s political allies on the education council recently voted to ban bartending classes in tourism-industry vocational high schools. Last Thursday, Erdogan lashed out at the United Nations Security Council for being a “Christian body”that didn’t properly represent the interests of Muslim nations.

But changing the Turkish language is different; it is striking at the heart of the grand transformation ushered in by Ataturk in the 1920s. When Ataturk came to power as the Ottoman Empire collapsed at the end of World War I, the language spoken in Turkey had been a rich tapestry of Arabic, Turkish and Farsi woven together in flowing Arabic script. As part of Ataturk’s scheme to “modernize” Turkey, Arabic script was replaced with the Latin alphabet. Arabic and Farsi words were systematically replaced with German and French.