Atatürk Gave Turkey Three Months to Switch Alphabets

On 1 November 1928, the Turkish parliament passed Law No. 1353, replacing the Arabic-derived Ottoman script with a Latin alphabet purpose-built for Turkish. Two days later it took effect.

The Language Commission had wanted a five-year transition. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk refused. According to the journalist and commission member Falih Rıfkı Atay, his line was: "This will either be done in three months or never." The commission also wanted to keep both q and k; Atatürk struck q from the final list and added the dotless ı, the soft ğ, and the cedilla'd ş — letters tuned to Turkish phonemes the Arabic script had blurred together.

He made the rollout personal. On 9 August 1928, at a Republican People's Party gala in Gülhane Park, Atatürk pulled out a chalkboard and walked the crowd through the alphabet himself. Through August and September he toured the country with the same routine: train station, blackboard, lesson. Government officials sat for a written examination on the new letters between 8 and 25 October. From 1 December, every newspaper, magazine, advertisement, and movie subtitle had to use the new script.

The literacy numbers tracked the campaign. In 1923, when the Republic was founded, about 2.5 percent of the population could read. By 1927 the figure was 10.5 percent; by 1935, after seven years of Latin-script schooling and adult-education Millet Mektepleri, or Nation's Schools, it was 20.4 percent.

A reform that fast, that total, leaves a particular kind of mark. A child born in 1925 grew up unable to read what their grandparents had written, and unable to write what their grandparents had read. The script change cut everyday readers off from the Ottoman written record in a single autumn. For Atatürk, that was part of the point.