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LEARNING TO READ (AGAIN): THE SOCIAL EXPERIENCES OF TURKEY'S 1928 ALPHABET REFORM

Abstract This article reconsiders Turkey's 1928 alphabet reform by shifting the focus from the state to the social experiences of alphabet change. Rather than assuming an obedient and indifferent public silently following the decrees of an authoritarian and repressive regime, it explores the actual processes, institutions, and lived experiences of the alphabet reform by drawing on a variety of sources, including unpublished archival evidence and personal narratives collected through oral interviews. It draws attention to the multiplicity of experiences of learning to read and write (the new letters) as well as to the persistence of the Ottoman script; it also examines the variety of ways that state authorities dealt with this persistence. The analysis of this particular reformist measure has implications for understanding social change and the emergence of a nationalist culture in the early republican period as well as state–society relations and the nature of the Kemalist state.