Script reforms deliberately severed Turkic peoples from wider Islamic identity

Evidence

The fate of the Turkic-speaking peoples in the zones incorporated into today’s Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and the USSR is especially exemplary. A family of spoken languages, once everywhere assemblable, thus comprehensible, within an Arabic orthography, has lost that unity as a result of conscious manipulations. To heighten Turkish–Turkey’s national consciousness at the expense of any wider Islamic identification, Atatürk imposed compulsory romanization. The Soviet authorities followed suit, first with an anti-Islamic, anti-Persian compulsory romanization, then, in Stalin’s 1930s, with a Russifying compulsory Cyrillicization. — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 190

Categorization

• XREF: Direct case study for the field: language/script manipulation as state instrument against trans-national Islamic identification — connects to Islamophobia’s stake in erasing supranational identities. — connects to: The term ‘Turk’ replaced ‘Saracen’ and carried ethnic, political, and religious meaning — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 144; Fifty-one UN member countries issued a joint declaration condemning China’s crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Turkic communities, citing the UN report. — UN Member Countries Condemn China’s Crimes Against Humanity
• SEED: A piece on how alphabet reform functions as a state technology of identity-shaping across Atatürk’s Turkey, Soviet Central Asia, and beyond.

Broader Connections

• The term ‘Turk’ replaced ‘Saracen’ and carried ethnic, political, and religious meaning #expands (0.82) — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 144