The Siftings Herald

Turks Learning New Alphabet

CONSTANTINOPLE, Oct. 12 (AP) —Mustapha Kemal has turned school master under whose tutelage a nation of 14 million Turks must learn their A B C's all over again.

The first course in the newly adopted Latin alphabet which scraps the old complicated Arab characters has been inaugurated at Dolma Bagtche Palace for deputies, cabinet ministers and the president's staff who sit for hours on hard chairs like model school boys, while the Ghazi demonstrates the new alphabet on a blackboard before them.

Taking the cue from the leader Kemal, many Turkish organizations and business houses have also opened free courses of instruction in the new alphabet and the people's party (Kemal's party—sole political organization in republican Turkey) has mapped out a program for demonstrating the new letters in movies, theatres, and even in coffee-houses and cabarets.

Within two years the use of Arab letters will be taboo in the new Turkey and the national museums already are beginning to collect examples of the old caligraphy to preserve for the generations to come.

The optimistic Kemalists believe that illiteracy will be conquered in Turkey, thanks to the simplified alphabet. It is Kemal's firm conviction that the intricate Arabic letters which change their form when used at the beginning, the middle, and the end of a word, are responsible for the fact that 90 per cent of the Turks today are illiterate.