<div dir="ltr"><br><div class="gmail_quote"> Forwarded From: <b class="gmail_sendername">Fierman, William</b> <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:wfierman@indiana.edu">wfierman@indiana.edu</a>></span><br><br><br><br>
<div>
<div style="direction:ltr;font-family:Tahoma;color:#000000;font-size:10pt">
<h1>Erdogan Pushes Ottoman Language Classes as Part of Traditional Turkish Values</h1>
<div>
<p><span>By
<a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/y/ceylan_yeginsu/index.html" rel="author" title="More Articles by CEYLAN YEGINSU" target="_blank">
<span>CEYLAN YEGINSU</span></a></span><u></u>DEC. 8, 2014<u></u>
</p>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/09/world/europe/erdogan-pushes-ottoman-language-classes-as-part-of-tradtional-turkish-values.html?ref=world#story-continues-1" target="_blank">Continue reading the main story</a>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/09/world/europe/erdogan-pushes-ottoman-language-classes-as-part-of-tradtional-turkish-values.html?ref=world#story-continues-1" target="_blank">Continue reading the main story</a>
<span>Share This Page</span>
<ul></ul>
<div>
<br>
</div>
</div>
<p>
ISTANBUL — President <a title="Times topic." href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/e/recep_tayyip_erdogan/index.html" target="_blank">
Recep Tayyip Erdogan</a> of <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/turkey/index.html?inline=nyt-geo" title="More news and information about Turkey." target="_blank">
Turkey</a> promised on Monday to introduce compulsory classes in Ottoman Turkish into the national school curriculum, regardless of public objections.</p>
<p>
Ottoman Turkish is an older form of the national language, written in a type of Arabic script, with many words and phrases borrowed from Arabic or Persian. Its official use was discontinued in 1928 by
<a title="Times topic." href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/a/kemal_ataturk/index.html" target="_blank">
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk</a>, the founder of modern <a title="Times topic." href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/turkey/index.html" target="_blank">
Turkey</a>, in favor of a more vernacular form of Turkish with fewer borrowed words, written with the Latin alphabet.</p>
<p>
“There are those who do not want this to be taught,” Mr. Erdogan told the Religion Council in Ankara on Monday. “This is a great danger. Whether they like it or not, the Ottoman language will be learned and taught in this country.”</p>
<p>
His remarks have added fuel to a debate sparked last week by the country’s National Education Council, which proposed that Ottoman language classes become mandatory at religious high schools and be offered as optional electives in secular high schools.</p>
<p>
The council also called for classes in “religious values” to be taught to children as young as 6, and that compulsory religious education should begin in the first three years of primary school.</p>
<p>
The recommendations have drawn widespread criticism from parents and political opponents, who argue that the council — and the Islamist-led government of Mr. Erdogan — was trying to “Islamize” the country’s public schools and roll back the secularization and
modernization of Turkey that Ataturk instituted.</p>
<p>
“The education system is in shambles, but instead of introducing real reforms, the government is pushing through irrelevant backward subjects that do nothing more than brainwash children with their ideologies,” said Ayse Karvan, a mother of two students at
the Behcet Kemal Caglar High School.</p>
<p>
“Why Ottoman?” Ms. Karvan asked. “The Turkish language doesn’t even have significant Ottoman roots. It’s not like Latin, which is the core root of Latin languages. It’s irrelevant.”</p>
<p>
Mr. Erdogan argued that knowledge of the older language will help Turks reconnect with their past and enable them to read old documents and the inscriptions on old gravestones. “History rests in those gravestones,” he said. “Can there be a bigger weakness than
not knowing this?” He called Ataturk’s switch to vernacular Turkish and the Latin alphabet “equal to the severing of our jugular veins.”</p>
<p>
Mr. Erdogan’s critics often accuse him of wanting to recreate an Ottoman Empire-like state in Turkey, pointing to measures to quash political opposition and rein in
<a title="Times article." href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/04/world/turkish-police-to-get-more-search-powers.html" target="_blank">
the judiciary</a> and the media, to the <a title="Times article." href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/01/world/europe/erdogan-uses-conflict-to-consolidate-power.html" target="_blank">
immense new presidential palace</a> he is erecting in Ankara, and even to <a title="Al Arabiya article." href="http://english.alarabiya.net/en/variety/2014/11/18/Erdogan-slams-ridicule-over-Muslims-discovered-Americas-claim-.html" target="_blank">
his remarks last month</a> claiming that Muslim sailors reached the New World centuries before Columbus.</p>
<u></u>
<h2>Next in Europe</h2>
<u></u><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/09/world/europe/christian-social-union-plan-immigrants-speak-german-at-home.html" target="_blank">
<h2>German Party Backs Off Language Proposal for Immigrants</h2>
<div></div>
</a><u></u><u></u></div>
</div>
</div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature">=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+<br><br> Harold F. Schiffman<br><br>Professor Emeritus of <br> Dravidian Linguistics and Culture <br>Dept. of South Asia Studies <br>University of Pennsylvania<br>Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305<br><br>Phone: (215) 898-7475<br>Fax: (215) 573-2138 <br><br>Email: <a href="mailto:haroldfs@gmail.com">haroldfs@gmail.com</a><br><a href="http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/">http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/</a> <br><br>-------------------------------------------------</div>
</div>