Historian Counters Claims: “Ignorance, Not Technology  Was the Real Downfall of the Ottoman Empire”

An op-ed challenges the frequent claim by political figures, including the Turkish President, that the 1928 Alphabet Reform made Turks illiterate overnight. Citing historical data, the author argues that Ottoman literacy rates were already critically low, making the reform one of the great successes of the Turkish Revolution.

By Umit Zileli of NEFES Gazette

Fact-Checking the Claim: Was Turkey “Made Illiterate Overnight”?

You have likely heard the narrative, frequently repeated by conservative and political Islamist circles in Turkey, that the 1928 Turkish Alphabet Reform (Harf Devrimi) instantly rendered the Turkish population illiterate.

The Turkish President often brings up this talking point, typically using the line: “Young people cannot even read their grandparents’ gravestones anymore!”

For instance, on November 10, 2019 (Atatürk Commemoration Day), he dismissed claims of low literacy in the Ottoman era as slander, stating:

“When we add that the Alphabet Reform virtually reset everything, of course, our country experienced a period of very low literacy, but to blame the Ottoman Empire for this is libel.”

This statement prompts a recurring question: Does the Presidential advisory team not include a single expert knowledgeable in modern Turkish history?

The Truth About Ottoman Literacy: 2-10%

A look at the data from veteran historian Orhan Koloğlu’s book, Our Literacy from Ottoman to Turkish, provides a crucial counterpoint:

• Official Exaggeration: Koloğlu states that literacy during the Ottoman period was often exaggerated by state officials to be around 10%.
• Minority Contribution: Approximately 4% of that rate consisted of non-Muslim groups—Armenians, Greeks, and smaller numbers of Arabs and Albanians—who were predominantly employed in state services (often referred to as Millet-i Sadıka).
• Post-War Collapse: Following World War I, where many literate Turkish men died on the front lines, the literacy rate in the Armistice period (1918-1922) plummeted to an extremely low level, sometimes cited as low as 2% to 4%.

The widespread claim that “at least half of the Ottoman population was literate” simply found no scientific basis, even among contemporary Ottoman elites.

The Republic’s Starting Point: From Servitude to Citizenship

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk understood that ignorance (cehalet) was the biggest obstacle to nation-building.

Even before the War of Independence ended, his first major assembly was with teachers. Let’s examine the state of Turkish society immediately after the Great Victory:

• Demographics: The total population was about 11 million.
• Income: Per capita national income was near zero.
• Health: Anatolia was ravaged by diseases like malaria and trachoma.
• Literacy: The overall literacy rate was 7%. Of this, about 4% belonged to minorities, and of the remaining 3% of the Turkish population, only 0.014% were women.

This was the state of the society that transitioned into the Republic.

A massive mobilization followed, spearheaded by the young Minister of National Education, Mustafa Necati, as Atatürk worked on the new Turkish alphabet. By 1928, thanks to these efforts, the literacy rate had climbed to 11%. This marginal increase—from 7% to 11%—is what the critics refer to when they claim literacy was “reset overnight.”

The True Success of the Reform

What happened after the Alphabet Reform?

“National Schools” (Halk Mektepleri) were opened across the country. By 1935, the population had risen to 16 million, and the proportion of people who were fully literate, including those attending high school and university and effectively using modern Turkish, had reached 25%.

The historical data confirms that the Alphabet Reform was a core achievement of the Turkish Revolution.

An Eyewitness Account: The Living History

To counter the rhetoric of “palavra” (nonsense), one must look at eyewitness accounts, such as that of Cahit Kayra, a distinguished statesman who passed away in 2021 at the age of 104.

Cahit Kayra, who lived through the reform, recalled:

“I belong to the 1938 generation. I read in primary school with Arabic letters, the Ottoman alphabet… The Alphabet Reform happened when I was in the fifth grade. At that time, virtually none of the children in my class, except for me and a few others, had learned to read, and certainly not to write!“

Kayra emphasized that when the new Latin letters were introduced, every child, without exception, learned to read and write the new alphabet quickly.

His final words on the matter stand as a direct rebuttal to the critics:

“They say all of our history vanished when the Latin alphabet was adopted. They don’t know that even in the old days, people couldn’t read documents written in Arabic script. It was after the alphabet change that old documents were translated and published in Turkish letters, allowing us, the new generation, to learn about our own past. The ancients didn’t know the past, but we, the new ones, learned it thanks to the reform.”