President Tayyip Erdogan stirred fierce criticism on Tuesday with plans to make lessons in Ottoman Turkish mandatory in high schools, prompting one opposition politician to declare that an army could not force his daughter to learn the language.
Erdogan said on Monday that Ottoman, an old form of Turkish using a version of Arabic script replaced by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk with the Latin alphabet on foundation of the secular Republic in 1923, should be taught in schools to prevent younger generations losing touch with their cultural heritage.
"Erdogan's concern is not teaching the Ottoman language...His real aim is a settling of accounts with secularism and the Republic," Akif Hamzacebi, spokesman for the main opposition CHP in parliament. "Erdogan actually wants to revive the Arabic alphabet in Turkey," he said.
Opponents accuse Erdogan of behaving like a modern-day sultan, his Islamist ideology and intolerance of dissent taking Turkey far from Ataturk's secular ideals. Read more
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The reintroduction of Ottoman Turkish is another step in Erdogan's Islamization of Turkey and will have negative effect upon Christians and other religious minorities in Turkey, as well as the Kurds and other ethnic minorities in that nation.
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