Öztürkçe refers to a purist form of
Turkish, which is largely free of Persian and Arab influences. Öztürkçe was an active target of the Turkish language reform. This language policy of
Turkification
Turkification, Turkization, or Turkicization ( tr, Türkleştirme) describes a shift whereby populations or places received or adopted Turkic attributes such as culture, language, history, or ethnicity. However, often this term is more narrowly ...
was enforced by the written reform and from 1932 by the
Turkish Language Association
The Turkish Language Association ( tr, Türk Dil Kurumu, TDK) is the regulatory body for the Turkish language, founded on 12 July 1932 by the initiative of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and headquartered in Ankara, Turkey. The Institution acts as the o ...
(TDK). The TDK collected for this purpose Turkic wordings in historical sources and Anatolian dialects. On this basis, the TDK formed a large number of neologisms that were disseminated using media and textbooks. In 1937,
Atatürk himself anonymously wrote a geometry book for students with special terms chosen by him, which are still in use today. From the 1940s, the TDK developed normative dictionaries (Türkçe Sözlük) and spelling guides (Yazım kılavuzu).
The use of Öztürkçe was and is an indicator for the world view of
Kemalism. For several decades, no active policy of voice control is taking place.
[Klaus Kreiser: Kleines Türkei-Lexikon. München 1992, s.v. Türk Dil Kurumu]
See also
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Replacement of loanwords in Turkish
The replacing of loanwords in Turkish is part of a policy of Turkification of Atatürk. The Ottoman Turkish language had many loanwords from Arabic and Persian, but also European languages such as French, Greek, and Italian origin—which were ...
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Linguistic purism
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Öztürkçe
Linguistic purism
Turkish language
Turkish nationalism