From Göktürk Runes To A Common Latin Script: Historical Alphabets Of The Turks And The Problem Of Orthographic Unity

This article offers a diachronic survey of the writing systems used for Turkish and other Turkic varieties over roughly 1,300 years, from the earliest Göktürk (Orkhon) inscriptions to contemporary Latin-based alphabets. It examines the structural and functional properties of thirteen major scripts—Göktürk, Manichaean, Sogdian, Uyghur, Brāhmī, Tibetan, Syriac, Hebrew, Greek, Armenian, Arabic (pre- and post-reform), Cyrillic, and Latin—with particular attention to how adequately each represents the phonological system of Turkish. On the basis of grapheme–phoneme correspondence and coverage of vowel and consonant inventories, the article proposes approximate “suitability percentages” for each alphabet. In the second part, it analyses the emergence of the 34-letter Common Turkic Alphabet adopted at the 1991 Symposium on Contemporary Turkic Alphabets (Marmara University) and compares this model with the Latin-based orthographies of Turkish, Azerbaijani, Uzbek, Turkmen, Karakalpak, Crimean Tatar, and Gagauz. A table of conformity scores highlights both the high compatibility of some standards (Azerbaijani, Turkish, Gagauz, Crimean Tatar) and the marginal or non-existent alignment of others. The study argues that, despite strong historical and political constraints, a functionally unified Common Turkic Latin Alphabet remains a realistic and culturally beneficial goal for enhancing written communication across the Turkic world.

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