Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
II. Uluslararası Coğrafya Eğitimi Kongresi, Eskişehir, Türkiye, 3 - 05 Ekim 2019, ss.140-142
The debate about language in Turkey, began with largely modernization movements in the Ottoman
Empire. This process, which started with the Tanzimat in the 19th century, turned into tough debates
during the II Mesrutiyet and became a matter of civilization change in the Republican period.
Therefore, language debates are considered as part of the nation-state building process in the
Republican period. The Turkish Language Revolution started in 1932 with the Turkish Language
Examination Society and the First Turkish Language Congress, and the state-led language
simplification movement was initiated. For this purpose, new words have been proposed instead of
foreign origin words in Turkish Language. In this process, all kinds of foreign words have been
liquidated regardless of whether they to become part of the Turkish or not. Words of foreign origin,
especially Arabic and Persian words, were liquidated from the Turkish language. Again in this
process, dictionaries and texts belonging to the historical periods of Turkish were scanned, words were
compiled from the Anatolian dialects, the vocabulary of contemporary Turkish dialects were examined
and the possibilities of Turkish production were forced to derive new words. Again in this period, the
Sun Language Theory was developed against the intense liquidation movements in the language, the
works of liquidation of Arabic and Persian words were partially reduced and the efforts towards Pure
Turkish were limited to a certain extent. However, this development took a very short time and after a
while the revolutionary movements in the language became active again. Therefore, the terms of the
science of Geography have also been significantly influenced by these developments in the language.
In this context, the aim of this study is to examine the development of geographical terms in the period
up to the present day before the Republic of Turkey. The main source of the research conducted
according to qualitative research methodology is geography textbooks. The most basic and most
frequently used materials in the education process are textbooks. In addition to being complementary
to educational programs, textbooks are a guide for teachers and students in classroom practices.
Textbooks are academic resources in which scientific knowledge is presented systematically as well as
belonging to a discipline. textbooks of the early Republican era in Turkey was prepared with the
nation-state approach and is one of the most important means of modernization. In this context,
sample geography textbooks written before, during and after the Language Revolution were analyzed
with the content analysis technique. Among the findings; It was determined that new terms were
derived from the Arabic and Persian origin words before the Language Revolution, some of these
terms continued to be used today, and the other part was replaced by Western terms. The findings were
discussed through the related literature and some suggestions were suggested.
Keywords: Geographical Term, Linguistics Development, Turkish Language Revolution