Why did turkey change their alphabets from Arabic to Latin letters since they became a Republic?

Question

Why did turkey change their alphabets from Arabic to Latin letters since they became a Republic?

Answer 1

Turkey first changed to Latin in 1928 to begin Westernizing themselves. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 a vast amount of other Turkic language speaking areas of the former USSR also followed suit.

There's been a renewal of Arabic over there, but mainly is just limited to parts of Tajikistan. Their language is close to Persian/Farsi (which is spoken in Iran).

Answer 2

That was a crucial decision made by Ataturk (if I'm not wrong about his name), he's the father of modern Turkey. He decided the modernization of his country. I think that was a wise decision... on the other hand, the arabs hate turks more than europeans do, so probably that was another factor that influences his decision.

Answer 3

I think they are trying to imitate as a europeans but in fact they are not europeans  ^_^

Answer 4

Atatürk - known by Turks as the Father of the Turks - was the one responsible for this language reform in about 1932. The Arabic Alphabet never fitted the sounds of Turkey, whilst the Latin Alphabet - with slight modifications - fits it perfectly.

To the first contributor: it is open to debate whether Turks are Europeans or not; part of Turkey is, after all, in Europe. But, in any case, why should they not use the Latin alphabet just because they are not Europeans? After all, the Americans use it..

Answer 5

there are two reasons for Ataturk that he made that decision:

1- he wanted to make turkey looks like any other european nation, and he thought they can't be so if they are still using arabic scripts. in fact, they didn't only change the script, but also many arabic words used in turkish were omitted and european or fabricated words used instead. (in spite of that, modern turkish still contains many arabic words)

2- the second reason was that Ataturk had a very anti-Islamic attitudes. he thaught that by changing the script (with some other languagal changes and stoping relations with the arab world) , he thought by doing so he can cut the relation between the turkish people and Islam as a religion.