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Turks love their language, but also fight over it

Turks proudly celebrate their language, but they have always fought over it.
A man looks at newspapers at a kiosk in Diyarbakir, Turkey November 2, 2015. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday the nation had voted for stability in a parliamentary election that saw the AK Party he founded win almost 50 percent of the vote, and said the world should respect the result.  REUTERS/Stoyan Nenov - RTX1UCZZ

Each year on Sept. 26, Turkey proudly celebrates its annual Turkish Language Day with conferences and festive ceremonies around the country. This year was no exception, with many leading politicians issuing statements calling on the Turkish people to continue their efforts to cherish the Turkish sensibility of language for future generations. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that Turkish is an “assurance of our people’s unity and solidarity.” Prime Minister Binali Yildirim hailed Turkish as a language that is among the most important and prevalent ones in the world, in terms of its geographical spread, the number of people who speak it and its richness. Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the leader of the Republican People’s Party, extensively praised the heritage Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s reforms produced for the Turkish language.

As a foreigner who learned Turkish as a fifth language, let me tell you that the Turkish mother tongue is quite difficult to learn — as an example, how about "Cekoslovakyalilastiramadiklarimizdanmissiniz" as one word — but also very beautiful and captivating. What is even more fascinating, though, is the political wars that are waged over the language.

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