COMMON COMMUNICATION LANGUAGE PROBLEMS FOR TURKS

Abstract

Languages play the most important role of partnership in the survival of nations. A common communication language has become essential to strengthen social, political and civil relations in the globalizing world. In this context, a common communication language is needed for Turkic peoples to maintain their unity. The historical unity of literary language among Turkic peoples shows that this idea is still possible today. As a result of the important historical changes and different developments in Turkic peoples’ lives that have a common history, various events have been experienced with the differentiation of their languages. Consequently, the general Turkic language was divided into different sections. At the end of the 19th century, intellectuals who understood the necessity of language unity in the development of Turkic nations as a single nation began to work seriously in this field. İsmail Gaspıralı stated that the only common literary language is essential for the Turkish unity and explained the existence of the old Turkic Empires and the magnificent past of the Turks with the existence of a common communication language. Ali Bey Huseynzade, who devoted his life to the ideology of Turkism, successfully continued this tendency which was initiated by İsmail Bey. One of the points that Huseynzade insisted on language was the "Common Turkic Language" issue. Ali Bey stated that Turkic tribes spoke the same language with some dialect differences in very large lands. The common language movement initiated by Gaspirali starting with Azerbaijan received great support from Turkic intellectuals in the Ottoman Empire, Egypt and the Balkans. Hundreds of intellectuals such as Ziya Gokalp, Emin Yurdakul, Mehmed Hadi, Ahmet Aga (yev), Munevver Kari had united with Gaspirali. In our study, starting from the first Turkish text in which the name of the Turkic nation is mentioned to the views of pioneers such as İsmail Gaspirali, Ali Bey Huseynzade, Ziya Gokalp, who are important ideologists of the common literary language in the modern and their studies on this subject are evaluated.