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| Recep Tayyip Erdogan is planning to make Arabic-alphabet Ottoman language compulsory in high schools |
Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has vowed to make lessons in the Arabic-alphabet Ottoman language compulsory in high schools -- a highly symbolic move which enraged secularists who claim he is persuing [sic] an increasingly Islamist agenda.
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, abolished the Ottoman language in 1928, replacing its Arabic alphabet with a Latin one.
He also purged the language of many of its Arabic, Persian and Greek words to create a new "pure" Turkish closer to the language people spoke.
Critics claimed Erdogan's vow to reintroduce teaching of the language "no matter what they say" was another bid to roll back Ataturk's secular reforms, which were based on a strict separation between religion and state.
Turkey's National Education Council, largely made up of members backed by Erdogan's Islamic-rooted government, voted over the weekend to make classes compulsory at religious high schools and an option at regular high schools.
The council also voted to ban bartending classes at tourism training high schools. » | AFP | Monday, December 08, 2014
