RFE/RL on Crimean Tatars & Latin Script

Date: Mon, 05 May 97 21:05:41 -0500
From: MINELRES moderator <[email protected]>
Message-Id: <[email protected]>
To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
Subject: RFE/RL on Crimean Tatars & Latin Script

From: MINELRES moderator       \ Internet:    ([email protected])

---------------------------------------------------

Ukraine: Crimean Turks Return Late To Latin Script

By David Nissman and Don Hill  Washington, 24 April 1997 (RFE/RL) 

-- In 1924, reformer Mustafa Kemal --renamed Ataturk, "the father of Turks,"
by a grateful nation -- decreed that Turkish in Turkey henceforth would be
written in the Latin alphabet rather than Arabic script. It was part of his
successful drive to Europeanize his country.

This month, ethnic Tatars in Crimea, in the eastern Ukraine, decided to
adopt the Latin alphabet. They thus join a trend among other Turkic peoples
in the former Soviet Union. 

This change in alphabets has been more symbolic than actual in the other
newly independent states. The main manifestation of the change has been on
billboards and in headlines. Newspapers continue to be published mostly in
some variation of Cyrillic script, as are books, including textbooks, and
magazines.

It may well be that the Crimean Tatars, although they are late to decide to
make this change, will be the first to implement it completely. There are
several reasons for this.

Among the Turkic peoples in the former Soviet Union, the Crimean Tatars bore
the brunt of Stalin's anti-Turkic obsession. This increases the symbolic and
the real importance to the Crimean Tatars of reconverting to the Latin
script that had been in use in Crimea from the late 1920s to the late 1930s

As Edige Kirimal wrote in his book, "The National Struggle of the Crimean
Tatars," beginning in 1921 --when the autonomous Crimean Republic was
established-- the Bolsheviks tried to isolate the Crimean Tatars from the
rest of the Turkic world. Kirimal pointed out that the other Tatars were
divided into Uzbeks, Karakalpaks, Turkmens, Kazaks, Kyrgyz, Bashkorts, Kazan
Tatars, Azerbaijanis, Kumyks, Balkars, Karachays and other independent
peoples. As he put it: "In this way, the Tatars of Russia were condemned to
a national, cultural and linguistic split. The only element that united the
literary languages of these peoples was the Arabic script."

When most of the post-Soviet Turkic peoples decided to adopt a common Turkic
Latin alphabet, they ended the primacy --but not the widespread use-- of
Arabic script. There are good reasons for preferring Latin letters. They can
reflect the phonetics of any one of the Turkic languages. Also, Latin script
is easier to master and can reduce illiteracy. 

Stalin imposed Cyrillic on most Turkic people by decree in 1940. In Crimea,
the process began two years earlier. The Peoples Commissariat for Education
and Soviet Propaganda had acted to "sovietize" Crimean Tatars by renouncing
Arabic, Persian and Ottoman words, no matter how many centuries they had
been in use, and substituting Russian or international words for them. The
authorities labeled resistance to the imposed change bourgeois nationalism.
At the same time, they pronounced much of the national Crimean Tatar
literature published in the period 1929-1941 to be un-soviet and un-
proletarian, and withdrew it from circulation.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s every Turkic republic formed alphabet
commissions, and each commission issued a decree renouncing the Cyrillic
script imposed on them in the Stalin years. They declared a return to the
Latin alphabet of the 1930s. 

But the Latin script has opponents, too. Some favor a return to Arabic. The
remnants of the sovietized elite see alphabet reform as a symbolic end to
hopes of reuniting the Soviet Union. There are also those who think that
such a reform ranks very low on the list of priorities of a newly
independent state.

Significant material problems impede the change of scripts. First, it is
very expensive in terms of capital investment in printing machinery,
typewriters, computer keyboards and the like. Second, the population needs
to be educated in the new alphabet. Third, decisions are needed on such
questions as which works of the past should be reprinted first, if at all. 

These problems must be resolved in newly independent states already mired in
economic reforms that demand massive investments. Also, these societies have
lost their primary means of national communication, newspapers. National
newspapers that used to circulate to hundreds of thousands now circulate in
the low thousands. 

Crimea does not face many of these problems. There is no sovietized elite
fighting a rear-guard action to protect its concept of a future Russian
empire. The Crimean Tatar population is smaller than the other Turkic
nations. Communication is easier. All things considered, the Crimean Tatars,
late from the post, are likely to lead the field in completing a change-over
to the Latin script.

 1997 Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

--
============================================================================
  MINELRES -  a forum for discussion on minorities in Central & Eastern
Europe

Submissions: [email protected]  Subscription/inquiries: minelres@mailbox.
riga.lv 
============================================================================