page_title: Turkish people
section_title: Language
hierarchical_section_title: Turkish people / Culture / Language
caption_attribution_description: English: Mustafa Kemal Atatürk introducing the new Turkish alphabet to the people of Kayseri. September 20, 1928 Türkçe: Mustafa Kemal Atatürk 20 Eylül 1928'de, Kayseri'deki Cumhuriyet Halk Fırkası önünde, halka yeni Türk harflerini öğretirken العربية: مصطفى كمال أتاتورك وضع الحروف الأبجدية التركية الجديدة بتاريخ 20 سبتمبر 1928. مصرى: مصطفى اتاتورك اتعمل نيو لوك للابجديه اللاتينى التركى يوم 20 سبتمبر 1928.
context_page_description: Turkish people or the Turks, also known as Anatolian Turks, are a Turkic ethnic group and nation living mainly in Turkey and speaking Turkish, the most widely spoken Turkic language. They are the largest ethnic group in Turkey, as well as by far the largest ethnic group among the Turkic peoples. Ethnic Turkish minorities exist in the former lands of the Ottoman Empire. In addition, a Turkish diaspora has been established with modern migration, particularly in Western Europe.
  Turks from the Central Asia settled in Anatolia in the 11th century, through the conquests of the Seljuk Turks. The region then began to transform from a predominantly Greek Christian society into a Turkish Muslim one. The Ottoman Empire came to rule much of the Balkans, the Caucasus, the Middle East, and North Africa over the course of several centuries. The empire lasted until the end of the First World War, when it was defeated by the Allies and partitioned.
context_section_description: The Turkish language also known as Istanbul Turkish is a southern Oghuz branch of the Turkic languages. It is natively spoken by the Turkish people in Turkey, Balkans, the island of Cyprus, Meskhetia, and other areas of traditional settlement that formerly, in whole or part, belonged to the Ottoman Empire. Turkish is the official language of Turkey. In the Balkans, Turkish is still spoken by Turkish minorities who still live there, especially in Bulgaria, Greece (mainly in Western Thrace), Kosovo, North Macedonia, Romania (mainly in Dobruja) and the Republic of Moldova (mainly in Gagauzia). The Turkish language was introduced to Cyprus with the Ottoman conquest in 1571 and became the politically dominant, prestigious language, of the administration.
  One important change to Turkish literature was enacted in 1928, when Mustafa Kemal initiated the creation and dissemination of a modified version of the Latin alphabet to replace the Arabic alphabet based Ottoman script. Over time, this change, together with changes in Turkey's system of education, would lead to more widespread literacy in the country. Modern standard Turkish is based on the dialect of Istanbul. Nonetheless, dialectal variation persists, in spite of the levelling influence of the standard used in mass media and the Turkish education system since the 1930s. The terms ağız or şive often refer to the different types of Turkish dialects.
  There are three major Anatolian Turkish dialect groups spoken in Turkey: the West Anatolian dialect (roughly to the west of the Euphrates), the East Anatolian dialect (to the east of the Euphrates), and the North East Anatolian group, which comprises the dialects of the Eastern Black Sea coast, such as Trabzon, Rize, and the littoral districts of Artvin. The Balkan Turkish dialects are considerably closer to standard Turkish and do not differ significantly from it, despite some contact phenomena, especially in the lexicon. In the post-Ottoman period, Cypriot Turkish was relatively isolated from standard Turkish and had strong influences by the Cypriot Greek dialect. The condition of coexistence with the Greek Cypriots led to a certain bilingualism whereby Turkish Cypriots knowledge of Greek was important in areas where the two communities lived and worked together. The linguistic situation changed radically in 1974, when the island was divided into a Greek south and a Turkish north (Northern Cyprus). Today, the Cypriot Turkish dialect is being exposed to increasing standard Turkish through immigration from Turkey, new mass media, and new educational institutions. The Meskhetian Turks speak an Eastern Anatolian dialect of Turkish, which hails from the regions of Kars, Ardahan, and Artvin. The Meskhetian Turkish dialect has also borrowed from other languages (including Azerbaijani, Georgian, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Russian, and Uzbek), which the Meskhetian Turks have been in contact with during the Russian and Soviet rule.
caption: Atatürk introducing the Turkish alphabet to the people of Kayseri. 20 September 1928. (Cover of the French L'Illustration magazine)
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