8 ms·

The letter Q was illegal in Turkey from 1928 until last month

92 points by rickyconnolly 13y ago

thret 13y ago
The first comment has a link to this article: http://gizmodo.com/382026/a-cellphones-missing-dot-kills-two-people-puts-three-more-in-jail http://gizmodo.com/382026/a-cellphones-missing-dot-kills-two... Wow.
- jpatokal 13y ago
  Yup, accents can be pretty critical. In Finnish, näin means "I saw", but nain means "I had sex with". This put a bit of a twist on a friend trying to tell me "I saw the rapist in the park!" when the umlaut dropped off...
  - pavlov 13y ago
    To make things even more complicated, nain means either "I had sex with N" or "I married N" depending on the case of the object noun. I've always thought it awfully pragmatic that the Finnish word for "getting married" is literally "to go and fuck together".
    - jpatokal 13y ago
      You can differentiate the cases by the conjugation of the object though. "nain Annan" (genetive, "all of") is marrying Anna, while "nain Annaa" (partitive, "part of") is fucking Anna. But yes, learners of Finnish should definitely be careful with that verb ;)
- gohrt 13y ago
  That's a sad story, and the alphabet caused some confusion, but the cell phone didn't kill anyone. Ermine's sociopathic father and Turkey's misogynistic culture set the stage for a man to man to lead is futher to gang-murder someone over an oblique and ungramattical insult to sexual purity.
duman 13y ago
The letter Q was never illegal in Turkey. It was just not allowed to be used in names of people/companies etc. due to the fact that it is not in Turkish alphabet. It is like letters ç,ğ,ü being illegal in US.
- unwind 13y ago
  Have some Häagen-Dazs if you really think using "the wrong letters" is illegal in the US.
  - duman 13y ago
    I don't think using "the wrong letters" is illegal in the US. What I've meant was it is as wrong as claiming the usage of "the wrong letters" is illegal in the US.
  - egeozcan 13y ago
    Häagen-Dazs has always been allowed to operate in Turkey as well as Quiznos Sub and others. If you wanted a local company, yes, you were only allowed to use Turkish letters in the official name. They didn't actually care what you actually wrote on your signs though. Official names being Turkish is important because otherwise officials would have needed to be capable of working with all characters in the universe.
    - ozgung 13y ago
      There is even a W Hotel at the hearth of Istanbul: http://www.wistanbul.com.tr/en/gallery/exterior http://www.wistanbul.com.tr/en/gallery/exterior
diorray 13y ago
Actually it was never illegal in Turkey. Q, W, X just not allowed to be used in people/company names because they're not in Turkish alphabet. I think this news mislead by AKP as usual.
- vidarh 13y ago
  Every reference I've found claims that the relevant law made the use of the Turkish alphabet compulsory in all public communication. E.g. "Minorities and Nationalism in Turkish Law", by Derya Bayir repeats the claim that the Law on the Turkish Alphabet of 1928 "obliged the use of the Turkish alphabet", as part of a section describing legal decisions used to outlaw use of Kurdish and other languages in official communication, and that has also been used to oust elected officials that have allowed use of other languages than Turkish. In private there has been more flexibility, though until recently, everything I've found (including the book above) indicates there were strict restrictions on use by e.g. private businesses when communicating privately with customers too. If you have references that contradicts the above mentioned book on these points, I'd love to see them. EDIT: While the Google Translate translation of the text of the law itself here is atrocious at best, it does seem to also support the linked article: http://www.idealhukuk.com/hukuk/hukuk.asp?mct=mevzuatdetay&x=kanun&y=Kanunlar&id=910 http://www.idealhukuk.com/hukuk/hukuk.asp?mct=mevzuatdetay&x...
  - diorray 13y ago
    The legislation you gave shows Turkish alphabet and Q, W, X is not included in this alphabet. AFAIK, generally country laws only accepts people/company names in their alphabet. Think that legislation like USA's alphabet. They didn't have Ğ, Ş, İ etc. in their alphabet so people/company names doesn't have these letters. Is that means Ğ, Ş, İ is forbidden? News like this for dramatize the status of kurds in Turkey :)
    - vidarh 13y ago
      The legislation goes far beyond restricting that. Unless the english translation is completely wrong, it also required e.g. newspapers and books to use the Turkish alphabet. That is far beyond legal restrictions in most other countries in the world, and had the defacto effect of placing a lot of restrictions on communication in other languages.
tty 13y ago
The Polish minority in Lithuania doesn't have the right to use the Polish orthography and/or letters of the Polish alphabet when writing their names. http://www.nouvelle-europe.eu/en/polish-national-minority-lithuania-three-reports-later http://www.nouvelle-europe.eu/en/polish-national-minority-li...
- levosmetalo 13y ago
  ... because allowing every minority or every individual to use their own alphabet would soon require the full unicode support everywhere, which is not a big deal, as well as that everyone else knows how to read/write it, which is a big deal. Btw, I am also not allowed to use Cyrillic alphabet or latin "ć" here in Germany when filling out official forms, but I don't consider that my rights are somehow jeopardized because of that.
  - tty 13y ago
    The Polish minority in Lithuania is autochtone, as far as I know (unlike Cyrillic in Germany). Furthermore, it's not merely a matter of not using the Polish letters - as the link that I provided says, their names get Lithuanized. (Mickiewicz > Mickevičius) Since I assume you're Serbian (your handle + the mention of ć and Cyrillic), here's an example. Imagine that the Hungarians in North of Serbia weren't allowed to write their name as Szabo Lajos (or Lajos Szabo) and instead they were forced to use Lajoš Sabić.
    - levosmetalo 13y ago
      > Imagine that the Hungarians in North of Serbia weren't allowed to write their name as Szabo Lajos (or Lajos Szabo) and instead they were forced to use Lajoš Sabić. You are absolutely right here. I was speaking only about an alphabet part of the problems, and why it is not practical. Forcing someone else to "translate" the name is completely other problem, which is much more severe. There is certainly a difference between writing István as Ištvan simply because it's how it's pronounced and the lack of á in alphabet and forcing him to call himself Ivan (or Stefan). There are many offenders to this, like Greece, or Bulgaria, or China, which IIRC at one moment required its own citizens to have "westernized" names in their travel documents.
jdmitch 13y ago
I think this is part of a general de-arabization trend which followed the crumbling of the Ottoman empire, as many words would naturally have been transliterated with a q (which would be ق in the Arabic script, which was used in Ottoman Turkish). I have heard that for many years it was illegal to name a son Muhammad in Turkey - you could only use the "Turkified" version Mehmed or Mehmet.
- farslan 13y ago
  Nope, you can still name it as "Muhammet", which is the turkish version of "Muhammad".
- diorray 13y ago
  Are you kidding me? "Muhammad" was never illegal in Turkey. Show evidence of prohibited.
- vidarh 13y ago
  That's probably part of it, but note that the articles point about e.g. Kurdish meshes well with decades of extensive cultural oppression of the Kurds and other minority groups in terms of outlawing teaching of their language, and even for a while outlawing the very name Kurd as well. I used to know a Turkish journalist who was granted political asylum in Norway (one of many Turks who had to flee over issues like this) after repeated death-threats from the then-Turkish regime (early 90's) because he wrote articles about the situation of the Kurds.
pt3530 13y ago
This is common in many cultures. Until recently the letters K,W and Y were "ilegal" in Portugal. Meaning that could not be used in names or official documents.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
- zubi 13y ago
  Turkuaz.
beloch 13y ago
To put things in perspective, you really need to take a look at the past to appreciate modern Turkey. The Ottoman empire was ruled by Sultan's who wielded absolute power, much like the leaders of other Arab nations today. Prior to the Sultan's were the emperor's of the Holy Roman empire, who wielded power so absolute that even medieval Europeans would have found it unsettling. Much of the symbolism used by European royalty was copied wholesale from Constantinople in attempts to achieve a similar measure of control. Ottoman society, like many Arab societies today, was heavily inclined towards absolute rule by "strong men". Where most of Europe gradually weaned itself off of absolute rulers by gradually limiting or subverting the power of monarchs over several generations, Turkey literally went from absolute rule to democracy in a single generation. Kemal was an officer during the first world war, which Turkey was on the wrong side of and wound up being partitioned by the allied forces. He played a huge role in reunifying Turkey through armed conflict that expelled the occupying forces. The last Ottoman Sultan was opposed to Kemal and called for his death, but the unification forces instead abolished the sultanate and declared a democracy. Kemal was held in such esteem that he was easily elected to lead this new democracy. Here's where things get interesting... Kemal's revolution and declaration of democracy are hardly novel. Many nations have undergone similar transformations, and many of the newly elected leaders soon turn into despots. Cultures that favor "strong men" tend to encourage this. Kemal introduced reforms intended to westernize Turkey. Western dress, even hats, were heavily encouraged while his "Hat Law" banned turban's and fezzes (No, the doctor would not have been a fan of Ataturk!). The new alphabet, seen in light of this wave of westernization, is particularly interesting. Ankara, Istanbul, and many other Turkish cities are full of monuments covered in arabic scrip proclaiming the awesomeness of various Sultan's. It's not unlike how Washington D.C.'s Lincoln memorial, etc., glorify the U.S. system of government, only the Ottoman empire had been accumulating such monuments for a lot longer. The Sultan's of the Ottoman empire lived in the shadow of Constantinople's emperors, so they tended to play themselves up rather a lot. If you tour Turkey today, your university educated tour guides (practically every guide in Turkey has a degree or two) are extremely unlikely to be able to read a word of arabic script. The new alphabet effectively severed Turkish citizens from centuries of extremely high quality propaganda that the Ottoman empire had accumulated to support the sultanate's rule. Kemal's legacy is not without it's dark spots, but the "strong man" culture of the Ottoman empire has largely abated. Obviously, it takes time, as people change slowly. Turkish citizens today are more likely to revere Kemal himself as they would a Sultan rather than their prime minister or president. The military has historically seen itself as the guardian of Ataturk's legacy, which has led to some truly unusual coups that, bizarrely enough, have probably kept Turkey on the course of democracy, although recently the power of the military has been gutted. The Turkish alphabet might be interpreted by some as a form of oppression, but it's adoption was more about breaking with the past and embracing democracy and the west. Compared to it's Arab neighbors, Turkey is astoundingly western and unusually democratic.
Aardwolf 13y ago
I wonder how Star Trek episodes involving Q were broadcast there :)
makmanalp 13y ago
This is a bit like one of those archaic laws like how in Staten Island, can only water your lawn if you hold the hose in your hand. No one actually gives a shit, and no one even knows that this was illegal in the first place. Both Turkish Q and F keyboard layouts have Q, W and X on them. Everyone uses them all the time, always. You can't use them in your official company name, but that's usually not your publicly visible brand name anyway. E.g. "Biletix", a ticketing company (it was acquired by ticketmaster, but it was called that before the acquisition) http://www.biletix.com/anasayfa/TURKIYE/tr http://www.biletix.com/anasayfa/TURKIYE/tr I don't think the article itself is shooting for this, but the current AKP government is trying to spin this inane and pointless change as "democratization". If they want to democratize things and appeal to oppressed minorities, they can start by taking thought criminals out of prison.
- asdfs 13y ago
  >This is a bit like one of those archaic laws like how in Staten Island, can only water your lawn if you hold the hose in your hand. No one actually gives a shit, and no one even knows that this was illegal in the first place. Probably water conservation, as it prevents sprinkler use. My city had a similar bylaw as recently as 10 years ago, until a new reservoir was built.

92 points by rickyconnolly 13y ago

thret 13y ago

The first comment has a link to this article: http://gizmodo.com/382026/a-cellphones-missing-dot-kills-two-people-puts-three-more-in-jail http://gizmodo.com/382026/a-cellphones-missing-dot-kills-two... Wow.

jpatokal 13y ago
Yup, accents can be pretty critical. In Finnish, näin means "I saw", but nain means "I had sex with". This put a bit of a twist on a friend trying to tell me "I saw the rapist in the park!" when the umlaut dropped off...
- pavlov 13y ago
  To make things even more complicated, nain means either "I had sex with N" or "I married N" depending on the case of the object noun. I've always thought it awfully pragmatic that the Finnish word for "getting married" is literally "to go and fuck together".
  - jpatokal 13y ago
    You can differentiate the cases by the conjugation of the object though. "nain Annan" (genetive, "all of") is marrying Anna, while "nain Annaa" (partitive, "part of") is fucking Anna. But yes, learners of Finnish should definitely be careful with that verb ;)
gohrt 13y ago
That's a sad story, and the alphabet caused some confusion, but the cell phone didn't kill anyone. Ermine's sociopathic father and Turkey's misogynistic culture set the stage for a man to man to lead is futher to gang-murder someone over an oblique and ungramattical insult to sexual purity.

duman 13y ago

The letter Q was never illegal in Turkey. It was just not allowed to be used in names of people/companies etc. due to the fact that it is not in Turkish alphabet. It is like letters ç,ğ,ü being illegal in US.

unwind 13y ago
Have some Häagen-Dazs if you really think using "the wrong letters" is illegal in the US.
- duman 13y ago
  I don't think using "the wrong letters" is illegal in the US. What I've meant was it is as wrong as claiming the usage of "the wrong letters" is illegal in the US.
- egeozcan 13y ago
  Häagen-Dazs has always been allowed to operate in Turkey as well as Quiznos Sub and others. If you wanted a local company, yes, you were only allowed to use Turkish letters in the official name. They didn't actually care what you actually wrote on your signs though. Official names being Turkish is important because otherwise officials would have needed to be capable of working with all characters in the universe.
  - ozgung 13y ago
    There is even a W Hotel at the hearth of Istanbul: http://www.wistanbul.com.tr/en/gallery/exterior http://www.wistanbul.com.tr/en/gallery/exterior

diorray 13y ago

Actually it was never illegal in Turkey. Q, W, X just not allowed to be used in people/company names because they're not in Turkish alphabet. I think this news mislead by AKP as usual.

vidarh 13y ago
Every reference I've found claims that the relevant law made the use of the Turkish alphabet compulsory in all public communication. E.g. "Minorities and Nationalism in Turkish Law", by Derya Bayir repeats the claim that the Law on the Turkish Alphabet of 1928 "obliged the use of the Turkish alphabet", as part of a section describing legal decisions used to outlaw use of Kurdish and other languages in official communication, and that has also been used to oust elected officials that have allowed use of other languages than Turkish. In private there has been more flexibility, though until recently, everything I've found (including the book above) indicates there were strict restrictions on use by e.g. private businesses when communicating privately with customers too. If you have references that contradicts the above mentioned book on these points, I'd love to see them. EDIT: While the Google Translate translation of the text of the law itself here is atrocious at best, it does seem to also support the linked article: http://www.idealhukuk.com/hukuk/hukuk.asp?mct=mevzuatdetay&x=kanun&y=Kanunlar&id=910 http://www.idealhukuk.com/hukuk/hukuk.asp?mct=mevzuatdetay&x...
- diorray 13y ago
  The legislation you gave shows Turkish alphabet and Q, W, X is not included in this alphabet. AFAIK, generally country laws only accepts people/company names in their alphabet. Think that legislation like USA's alphabet. They didn't have Ğ, Ş, İ etc. in their alphabet so people/company names doesn't have these letters. Is that means Ğ, Ş, İ is forbidden? News like this for dramatize the status of kurds in Turkey :)
  - vidarh 13y ago
    The legislation goes far beyond restricting that. Unless the english translation is completely wrong, it also required e.g. newspapers and books to use the Turkish alphabet. That is far beyond legal restrictions in most other countries in the world, and had the defacto effect of placing a lot of restrictions on communication in other languages.

tty 13y ago

The Polish minority in Lithuania doesn't have the right to use the Polish orthography and/or letters of the Polish alphabet when writing their names. http://www.nouvelle-europe.eu/en/polish-national-minority-lithuania-three-reports-later http://www.nouvelle-europe.eu/en/polish-national-minority-li...

levosmetalo 13y ago
... because allowing every minority or every individual to use their own alphabet would soon require the full unicode support everywhere, which is not a big deal, as well as that everyone else knows how to read/write it, which is a big deal. Btw, I am also not allowed to use Cyrillic alphabet or latin "ć" here in Germany when filling out official forms, but I don't consider that my rights are somehow jeopardized because of that.
- tty 13y ago
  The Polish minority in Lithuania is autochtone, as far as I know (unlike Cyrillic in Germany). Furthermore, it's not merely a matter of not using the Polish letters - as the link that I provided says, their names get Lithuanized. (Mickiewicz > Mickevičius) Since I assume you're Serbian (your handle + the mention of ć and Cyrillic), here's an example. Imagine that the Hungarians in North of Serbia weren't allowed to write their name as Szabo Lajos (or Lajos Szabo) and instead they were forced to use Lajoš Sabić.
  - levosmetalo 13y ago
    > Imagine that the Hungarians in North of Serbia weren't allowed to write their name as Szabo Lajos (or Lajos Szabo) and instead they were forced to use Lajoš Sabić. You are absolutely right here. I was speaking only about an alphabet part of the problems, and why it is not practical. Forcing someone else to "translate" the name is completely other problem, which is much more severe. There is certainly a difference between writing István as Ištvan simply because it's how it's pronounced and the lack of á in alphabet and forcing him to call himself Ivan (or Stefan). There are many offenders to this, like Greece, or Bulgaria, or China, which IIRC at one moment required its own citizens to have "westernized" names in their travel documents.

jdmitch 13y ago

I think this is part of a general de-arabization trend which followed the crumbling of the Ottoman empire, as many words would naturally have been transliterated with a q (which would be ق in the Arabic script, which was used in Ottoman Turkish). I have heard that for many years it was illegal to name a son Muhammad in Turkey - you could only use the "Turkified" version Mehmed or Mehmet.

farslan 13y ago
Nope, you can still name it as "Muhammet", which is the turkish version of "Muhammad".
diorray 13y ago
Are you kidding me? "Muhammad" was never illegal in Turkey. Show evidence of prohibited.
vidarh 13y ago
That's probably part of it, but note that the articles point about e.g. Kurdish meshes well with decades of extensive cultural oppression of the Kurds and other minority groups in terms of outlawing teaching of their language, and even for a while outlawing the very name Kurd as well. I used to know a Turkish journalist who was granted political asylum in Norway (one of many Turks who had to flee over issues like this) after repeated death-threats from the then-Turkish regime (early 90's) because he wrote articles about the situation of the Kurds.

pt3530 13y ago

This is common in many cultures. Until recently the letters K,W and Y were "ilegal" in Portugal. Meaning that could not be used in names or official documents.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

zubi 13y ago
Turkuaz.

beloch 13y ago

To put things in perspective, you really need to take a look at the past to appreciate modern Turkey. The Ottoman empire was ruled by Sultan's who wielded absolute power, much like the leaders of other Arab nations today. Prior to the Sultan's were the emperor's of the Holy Roman empire, who wielded power so absolute that even medieval Europeans would have found it unsettling. Much of the symbolism used by European royalty was copied wholesale from Constantinople in attempts to achieve a similar measure of control. Ottoman society, like many Arab societies today, was heavily inclined towards absolute rule by "strong men". Where most of Europe gradually weaned itself off of absolute rulers by gradually limiting or subverting the power of monarchs over several generations, Turkey literally went from absolute rule to democracy in a single generation. Kemal was an officer during the first world war, which Turkey was on the wrong side of and wound up being partitioned by the allied forces. He played a huge role in reunifying Turkey through armed conflict that expelled the occupying forces. The last Ottoman Sultan was opposed to Kemal and called for his death, but the unification forces instead abolished the sultanate and declared a democracy. Kemal was held in such esteem that he was easily elected to lead this new democracy. Here's where things get interesting... Kemal's revolution and declaration of democracy are hardly novel. Many nations have undergone similar transformations, and many of the newly elected leaders soon turn into despots. Cultures that favor "strong men" tend to encourage this. Kemal introduced reforms intended to westernize Turkey. Western dress, even hats, were heavily encouraged while his "Hat Law" banned turban's and fezzes (No, the doctor would not have been a fan of Ataturk!). The new alphabet, seen in light of this wave of westernization, is particularly interesting. Ankara, Istanbul, and many other Turkish cities are full of monuments covered in arabic scrip proclaiming the awesomeness of various Sultan's. It's not unlike how Washington D.C.'s Lincoln memorial, etc., glorify the U.S. system of government, only the Ottoman empire had been accumulating such monuments for a lot longer. The Sultan's of the Ottoman empire lived in the shadow of Constantinople's emperors, so they tended to play themselves up rather a lot. If you tour Turkey today, your university educated tour guides (practically every guide in Turkey has a degree or two) are extremely unlikely to be able to read a word of arabic script. The new alphabet effectively severed Turkish citizens from centuries of extremely high quality propaganda that the Ottoman empire had accumulated to support the sultanate's rule. Kemal's legacy is not without it's dark spots, but the "strong man" culture of the Ottoman empire has largely abated. Obviously, it takes time, as people change slowly. Turkish citizens today are more likely to revere Kemal himself as they would a Sultan rather than their prime minister or president. The military has historically seen itself as the guardian of Ataturk's legacy, which has led to some truly unusual coups that, bizarrely enough, have probably kept Turkey on the course of democracy, although recently the power of the military has been gutted. The Turkish alphabet might be interpreted by some as a form of oppression, but it's adoption was more about breaking with the past and embracing democracy and the west. Compared to it's Arab neighbors, Turkey is astoundingly western and unusually democratic.

Aardwolf 13y ago

I wonder how Star Trek episodes involving Q were broadcast there :)

makmanalp 13y ago

This is a bit like one of those archaic laws like how in Staten Island, can only water your lawn if you hold the hose in your hand. No one actually gives a shit, and no one even knows that this was illegal in the first place. Both Turkish Q and F keyboard layouts have Q, W and X on them. Everyone uses them all the time, always. You can't use them in your official company name, but that's usually not your publicly visible brand name anyway. E.g. "Biletix", a ticketing company (it was acquired by ticketmaster, but it was called that before the acquisition) http://www.biletix.com/anasayfa/TURKIYE/tr http://www.biletix.com/anasayfa/TURKIYE/tr I don't think the article itself is shooting for this, but the current AKP government is trying to spin this inane and pointless change as "democratization". If they want to democratize things and appeal to oppressed minorities, they can start by taking thought criminals out of prison.

asdfs 13y ago
>This is a bit like one of those archaic laws like how in Staten Island, can only water your lawn if you hold the hose in your hand. No one actually gives a shit, and no one even knows that this was illegal in the first place. Probably water conservation, as it prevents sprinkler use. My city had a similar bylaw as recently as 10 years ago, until a new reservoir was built.