One Nation, Two Languages: Latinization and Language Reform in Turkey and Azerbaijan, 1905-1938

Abstract

This dissertation examines 20th-century Turkic Latinization, the process by which Turkic language reformers replaced the Perso-Arabic alphabet with the Latin-based New Turkish Alphabet, from a transnational perspective. Focusing on the Turkish and Soviet Azerbaijani cases, my work reconstructs the intellectual and nationalist networks that were forged across imperial and national boundaries and shaped the debates over language, modernization, and national identity in Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Central Asia. The ascendancy of Turkic Latinization, I argue, emerged with the rise of the Soviet and Kemalist states in the post-WWI period. These revolutionary states enacted far-reaching reforms to modernize all areas of life, and remake their respective societies in a Soviet or Kemalist mold. At the heart of both states’ political projects was language reform, which increasingly equated Latinization with reaching modernity. Though the Soviets and Kemalists ultimately envisioned different modernities, their language reforms of the Turkic language both drew from the same pool of Turcological and nationalist literature.