A joint commission of the Organisation of Turkic States has reached a historic milestone after agreeing to create a common 34-letter alphabet for the Turkic countries – Turkey, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus – and all peoples who use a Turkic language.
According to media reports in Turkey, the decision, which is a historic achievement and the culmination of a decades-long effort, came during the third meeting of the Common Turkic Alphabet Commission held on 9-11 September in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, organised in cooperation with the Turkish Language Association (TDK) and attended also by members of the Organisation of Turkic States (TDT).
After two years of work on a proposal first introduced in 1991 – after the collapse of the USSR – to create a common alphabet for the Turkic nations based on the Latin alphabet, it has been agreed to create a common alphabet with 34 characters designed to represent all the phonemes of the different Turkic languages and dialects, facilitating the understanding, communication and cooperation between all these peoples and helping to preserve their cultural heritage.
‘A proposed common Turkic alphabet consisting of 34 letters has been agreed upon. Each letter in the proposed alphabet represents different phonemes found in the Turkic languages,’ said a statement issued by the TDT, which now calls on all relevant institutions in the different countries to support the implementation of this new alphabet.
A common alphabet project started a century ago
Currently Turkey, Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan use the Latin alphabet, while Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan still use all or part of the Cyrillic alphabet inherited from the Soviet Union. Already during the 1930s several Turkic peoples in the former USSR started using a Latin-based alphabet – the Yañalif – which was eventually replaced by Cyrillic characters during Stalin’s rule.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, however, the idea of creating a common alphabet for the Turkic states re-emerged. As a result, in 1991 and at Turkey’s initiative, a symposium was held in Istanbul where it was agreed to create a Latinised alphabet based on Turkish, to which the letters ä, ñ, q, w, x were added. However, since then only Azerbaijan (replacing the ä with ə), certain media and some peoples related to Turks in Ukraine, Moldova and Russia had adopted this alphabet, on the basis of which this new historic agreement has now been reached.
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Edited and reviewed by:
Pablo Gómez is a specialist in Turkey and has been editor-in-chief of Hispanatolia since 2011. He has been analysing current affairs and geopolitics in Turkey and the surrounding region since 2006.
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