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The move, along with many other Islamist reforms taking place right now, isn't based on technical considerations as any Turk or anyone familiar with Turkish history and politics is aware of. What you've pointed out is merely the pedagogical basis on which the current orthography was adopted: "ABC" was chosen because that is the standard Latin order, but "C" has a "J"-like sound because the third letter in the old alphabet is "jeem" (or in Turkish transliterated as "cim", not to be confused with the Persian "j").

Your post does, however, show how the current government does do an excellent job of selling its reforms as secular to a politically overcorrect West eager for a poster boy. Turkey proves that neo-liberalism works, that a patronizing "Islamic democracy" works (because, you know, Muslims aren't capable of grown-up democracy), and that Muslims won't blow the world up (well, you know, as long as they keep it in Syria). So long as economic interests aren't harmed, we're happy to eat up such "technical" reasons for alarming reforms whose Turkish supporters and detractors alike love and detest for their religious nature, not for any other reason. The head scarves in universities ban thus got reported in the Western media as an issue of civil rights, but obviously no one in the country thought of it that way.

A female American journalist explained when she was asked how she felt as a single woman going through Qandahar and the most dangerous parts of Taliban-controlled Afghanistan by herself. She wittily replied that Afghanistan was a country of men who hate the government with big beards and guns riding around in the back of pick up trucks: her native Montana, in other words. But we all know that Afghanistan isn't Montana. And so Turkey isn't exactly Norway.

Regarding non-Indo-European languages in Europe, I was trying to avoid offending anyone when I used the politic phrase "major language" in my previous follow-up post, but probably his time would be better served form a commercial point of view learning Turkish rather than Basque. But yes, Basque is also an option, as are Hungarian and Finnish. I figured there was at least some subconsciously professional motivation since Thom is a professional translator

Edited 2012-10-28 18:52 UTC