The historic decision taken last September by the Organisation of Turkic States to create a common 34-letter alphabet for all Turkic peoples and countries of Turkic culture has sown some confusion in Turkey, where many citizens have been wondering whether the Turkish alphabet will be modified to include the letters Q, X, Ň, Ä, Ŭ of the new unified alphabet.
In recent statements made to the daily Hürriyet, Professor Mustafa Öner, a member of the joint commission that established the new common alphabet, confirmed that ‘the letters Q, X, Ň, Ä, Ŭ will not be included in the Turkish alphabet’ and that ‘there will be no changes in writing’. ‘Other Turkic states will use those letters,’ Öner commented on the matter, trying to clarify the public’s doubts.
‘Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan switched from the Cyrillic to the Latin alphabet in 1992, and Uzbekistan in 1993. Despite this, there were differences between our languages. The Organisation of Turkic States (TDT) established a joint scientific commission in 2022, and I am the representative of Turkey. The aim of this commission is to create a common alphabet; in other words, each country will continue to write in its own language, and there will be no changes in our alphabet. These 5 letters will not be included in our alphabet, they were added so that other countries can have their needs of expressing certain sounds covered,’ the expert explained.
‘The countries of the Turkic world will be able to use the same sounds and letters thanks to this 34-letter alphabet. For example, the letter ‘ı’ in our alphabet was not present in the Latin alphabet, but it has been part of our language since 1928 thanks to the alphabet that Atatürk created,’ he said.
‘In one of the Central Asian republics, the letter ‘y’ is used instead of ‘ı’. This had to be unified. Since 1993, Uzbekistan writes ‘sh’ for the ‘ş’ sound, as in English, and ‘ch’ for ‘ç’. This is also not unified. For this reason, we have included our own letters (from the Turkish alphabet) ‘ş’ and ‘ç’ in the common alphabet. We hope that good news will come from Uzbekistan on this issue, and that they will remove the letters (‘sh’ and ‘ch’) that they use as in English,’ Öner said.
‘The Turkish alphabet, which was established by the commission assembled under Atatürk and which we continue to use today, is so perfect that it does not need to be changed. In fact, our own alphabet is serving as an inspiration for our brothers (in other Turkic countries),’ the linguist added.
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As a history lover, Pablo Gómez was captivated by Turkey from the first day he visited it in 2006: he got married there, has a house there… and has since become an expert on Turkey’s current affairs. With a long experience in media, he has been at the helm of hispanatolia.com since 2011.
