The reflections of republic period language discussions on Turkish language education: A research from the aspect of sociolinguistics

In a community, the changes in political, social, cultural and economical changes affect each other. These kind of changes in the community are also reflected to language and brings variety to language. Therefore it is impossible to consider a community which is independent from language and a language independent from community. Parallel to the changes in communal life, while it is understandable to observe new words and concepts in the language, it is subject to discussion whether language can change the community or not. One of the targeted principals of Turkish Language Reform is the consideration of constructing a new language in order to establish a new communal and political order, in other words a modern nation state. However there are different opinions whether this is linguistically possible or not and how and in what aspect the purification activity in Turkish will take place. Therefore, considering the historical progress of Turkey Turkish, it can be said that language discussions left their mark on especially republic period.It is observed that the source of language discussions in Turkey initiated in Tanzimat period (political reforms in Ottoman empire in 1839) in 19th century together with the modernization process, then it converted in to tough discussions in second constitutionalist period and finally together with the start up of republic period, it continued to remain in the agenda as a symbol of drifting to an new civilization structure. As the Turkish discussions, which has a background of 150 years, were shaped according to political stance rather than being linguistic, opinion differences occurred regarding application and method and therefore the discussions made on language resulted as continuous change in Turkish language used in effective tools such as mass communication tools or lesson books published by the government. Turkish language education was effected significantly due to changing government policies about language.In this study, the aim is to interpret the Turkish Language Reform once more in light of discussions and to present how this process reflected to Turkish language education by approaching to language as a ?public fact?.