A study on the changes of the writing system as an Ethnic Identity symbol of Turkmenistan

Abstract

In this study, I examine the historical and politic aspects of the changes of the writing system in Turkmenistan. Until the beginning of the Russian Revolution of 1917, an Arabic alphabet had been used in Azerbaijan and Central Asia, but for political reasons, it was replaced by a Latin alphabet, which is called Яналиф(New Alphabet). It was used mainly in Azerbaijan and Central Asia from the early 1920s to 1929. However, New Alphabet again changed to a Cyrillic for political reasons during the Soviet era until the early 1940s, and the Cyrillic writing system was used by the time of the Soviet Union’s dissolution. Located in the most southwest of the post-Soviet space, Turkmenistan is a country with a Soviet heritage, and there still exists the authoritarian rule. After the independence in 1991, the Turkmen government banned the use of Russian language, and expelled Russains or turkmenized Russian people in the country. One of its symbolic measures was the enactment of the New Turkmen writing system. The New Turkmen alphabet is based on the Latin alphabet in 1993, replacing the Russian–based Cyrillic, which was forcibly imposed by the Soviet in 1940. Independent Turkmenistan is the most closed and nationalistic among the new independent post- Soviet states. They banned the dominant use of Russian language as well as the lingua franca between Russian and ethnic peoples. Thus they founded a nation-state for the Turkmen people, not only abandoning the Cyrillic script first among Central Asian countries, but also adopting the Latin-based New Turkmen alphabet. In the case of Azerbaijan in Caucasus, where the writing system has been converted to a Latin script, and of Uzbekistan in Central Asia, where the government has led the conversion of the writing system, they reflected the opinions of people and experts including linguists. In the case of Turkmenistan, however, the first President S. Niyazov and his appointed linguists decided the writing system without reflecting the opinions of residents and other experts. They completely implemented the new writing system on January 1st, 1997, after 3 years of its establishment. But It is not yet fully successful. The conversion of the writing system in Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan shows independence, modernization and westernization as a symbol of rejection of the Soviet Cyrillic. Also they expected to be quickly incorporated into the Western community through their new Latin-based script. On the other hand, Turkmenistan fills the informational and cultural space of their own country with Turkmen ethnic people and Turkmen language exclusively. It is obvious that they have set up so called ‘a graphical and linguistic iron curtain’ and weakened the status of Russian language and Russian users by means of the will of a minority nationalist elites.