| This dissertation analyzes the language policy in Turkey and the political behavior of the proponents of the language reform, Kemalist modernists, as well as political behavior of the opposing groups, Turko-Islamic traditionalists. It also explores the causes of the language policy shifts in Turkey. This study focuses on the Republican era from the early 1920s to the present. Nevertheless, it also touches on the language situation before that time.; It is hoped that this work will contribute to the existing literature on language policy in general and the Turkish case in particular in two fields: methodological and contextual. Methodologically this dissertation, unlike orthodox theories of the political science that perceive the state as a rational actor, holds that elements that influence states' behavior in international and domestic areas are to an important degree cultural, and not just material. In this regard, it is argued that the Turkish language policy has been shaped through the debate among Kemalists, Islamists, and Turkists over perceptions of norms and identity, rather than the Turkish state's rational interests.; Contextually, considering the language policy shifts of the early 1980s from the Kemalist Westernism to Turko-Islamic traditionalism as a landmark evidence, it is argued that modernist efforts to transform the Turkish language have remained incomplete, and thus far from success. While acknowledging the present situation to be a catastrophe, it is suggested that the clash of norms and identities, lack of compromise, and mutual exclusion of the ‘others’ among the domestic actors, namely among Kemalist modernist purifiers and Turko-Islamic traditionalist simplifiers, have caused this catastrophic nature of the Turkish language. This contradicts the findings of most Turkish and Western scholars, who have argued that modernism had been successful in transforming Turkish society in general and its language in particular. |
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