A "Common Alphabet Commission" has been established to accelerate the process of achieving language unity across the Turkic states and transition to a common alphabet. The commission will hold its first meeting in Kyrgyzstan.
Decisions were made at the "Turkic World Common Alphabet Workshop" held in Bursa month last month on the anniversary of Language Day, and these decisions will be presented to Organization of Turkic States (OTS).
The Turkic languages are a group of closely related languages that form a family within the Altaic language group that unites nations spread across three continents, according to the head of the International Turkic Academy.
Turkic languages are distributed over a vast area in Eastern Europe and Central and North Asia, ranging, with some interruptions, from the Balkans to the Great Wall of China and from central Iran to the Arctic Ocean.
The workshop was chaired by Turkish Language Association (TDK) head Gürer Gülsevin, with the participation of Binali Yıldırım, chairperson of the OTS Council of Elders and deputy chairperson of the Justice and Development Party (AK Party).
Within the scope of the workshop, the 2022 İsmail Bey Gaspıralı "Unity in Language, Idea and Work" Turkic World Literature Awards and Turkish Language Service Awards were presented.
Mustafa Öner, a professor of Turkic language and literature, discussed the history of the common alphabet in his speech. "First of all, we must not forget the path and slogan established by our great leader and intellectual of the Turkic world, İsmail Gaspıralı, we must not deviate from this path. Especially remember the 1926 Baku Turkology Congress. This date was the breaking point of the Turkic world. On the one hand, Stalin was tagging and murdering our intellectuals; On the other hand, the intellectuals of the Turkic world were looking for the transition to the Latin alphabet and the way to the world," Öner explained.
In the workshop held in cooperation between the Organization of Turkic States and the Turkish Language Association, experts from Turkic states shared information about the alphabet and historical processes used in their own countries. It was emphasized at the event that the transition to a common alphabet should be accelerated and the application should be expanded.
At the workshop, the decision was made to establish the "Common Alphabet Commission" within the body of TDT to focus on a common alphabet for the Turkic world.
The commission, which will consist of two members to be proposed by the official institutions of the Turkic republics, will prepare a report on the common alphabet.
The commission will hold its first meeting in Kyrgyzstan and then present the common alphabet studies and report to the OTS Council of Elders.
President of Atatürk High Council of Culture, Language and History Muhammet Hekimoğlu and Hasan Hasanov, the Azerbaijani member of the OTS Council of Elders, also took part in the workshop.