The impact of script reforms on turkic peoples‘ integration: 20th-21st century experience
Keywords:
Turkic peoples, script reform, alphabet change, language policy, Latin alphabet, Cyrillic alphabet, Arabic script, national identity, Soviet language policy, orthographic transition, Pan-Turkism, post-Soviet transformationAbstract
This article examines the impact of script reforms on Turkic peoples' integration throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. The transitions from Arabic to Latin, then to Cyrillic, and in some cases back to Latin scripts affected over 200 million people across Eurasia. Through comparative historical analysis, this study investigates how these orthographic changes influenced national identity formation, literacy rates, and political integration within multi-ethnic states. The research demonstrates that script reforms served dual purposes: as instruments of modernization and as tools of political control. The study examines Turkey's Latin alphabet adoption (1928), Soviet-imposed Cyrillic transitions (1930s-1940s), and recent re-Latinization movements in Central Asia and the Caucasus.
