| Turkish belongs to the Altay
branch of the Uralo-Altay linguistic family. Through the span of
history, Turks have spread over a wide geographical area, taking
their language with them. Turkish speaking people have lived in
a wide area stretching from today's Mongolia to the north coast
of the Black Sea, the Balkans, East Europe, Anatolia, Iraq and a
wide area of northern Africa. Due to the distances involved, various
dialects and accents have emerged. The history of the language is
divided into three main groups, old Turkish (from the 7th to the
13th centuries), mid-Turkish (from the 13th to the 20th) and new
Turkish from the 20th century onwards. During the Ottoman Empire
period Arabic and Persian words invaded the Turkish language and
it consequently became mixed with three different languages. During
the Ottoman period which spanned five centuries, the natural development
of Turkish was severely hampered.
Then there was the "new language" movement. In 1928, five years
after the proclamation of the Republic, the Arabic alphabet was
replaced by the Latin one, which in turn speeded up the movement
to rid the language of foreign words. The Turkish Language Institute
was established in 1932 to carry out linguistic research and contribute
to the natural development of the language. As a consequence of
these efforts, modern Turkish is a literary and cultural language
developing naturally and free of foreign influences.
The history of Turkish Literature may be divided into three periods,
reflecting the history of Turkish civilization as follows: the period
up to the adoption of Islam, the Islamic period and the period under
western influence.
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