Actually it was never illegal in Turkey. Q, W, X just not allowed to be used in people/company names because they're not in Turkish alphabet. I think this news mislead by AKP as usual.
Every reference I've found claims that the relevant law made the use of the Turkish alphabet compulsory in all public communication.
E.g. "Minorities and Nationalism in Turkish Law", by Derya Bayir repeats the claim that the Law on the Turkish Alphabet of 1928 "obliged the use of the Turkish alphabet", as part of a section describing legal decisions used to outlaw use of Kurdish and other languages in official communication, and that has also been used to oust elected officials that have allowed use of other languages than Turkish.
In private there has been more flexibility, though until recently, everything I've found (including the book above) indicates there were strict restrictions on use by e.g. private businesses when communicating privately with customers too.
If you have references that contradicts the above mentioned book on these points, I'd love to see them.
..there is no ban for usage of Kurdish letters in public. As i said, because of Q, W, X letters are not in Turkish alphabet, they're just don't allowed to use these letters in names. They just added q - w - x to Turkish alphabet
(btw think about it; USA changing their alphabet, adding another letters, i think general reaction would like "what")
That's why they just write "q - w - x are free" in Turkish version. But in English version, sadly, they're saying kurds can't use their alphabets and they're dramatizing the status of kurds.
Such manipulations are typical for the pro-Islamic AK Party. This was not a democratic reform, it's just propaganda. There are no x, w, q letters in Turkish language hence no place for them in Turkish alphabet. A true democratic reform would be to legalize the Kurdish alphabet and the Kurdish language as a separate language. (And I'm saying that as a so-called 'Kemalist')
The legislation you gave shows Turkish alphabet and Q, W, X is not included in this alphabet. AFAIK, generally country laws only accepts people/company names in their alphabet.
Think that legislation like USA's alphabet. They didn't have Ğ, Ş, İ etc. in their alphabet so people/company names doesn't have these letters. Is that means Ğ, Ş, İ is forbidden? News like this for dramatize the status of kurds in Turkey :)
The legislation goes far beyond restricting that. Unless the english translation is completely wrong, it also required e.g. newspapers and books to use the Turkish alphabet.
That is far beyond legal restrictions in most other countries in the world, and had the defacto effect of placing a lot of restrictions on communication in other languages.
It does look like someone are selling them now, and may possibly have sold them while the laws were still on the books. But enforcement in a situation where a law has long been controversial and changes have been long coming, does nothing to say whether or not it was legal before, and whether or not it at one point was more strictly enforced.
If it hasn't been enforced for some time: Great. But it says nothing about the legality.
It indicates that teaching Kurdish and other minority languages in private schools was allowed from ca. 2002, and so presumably books such as the Kurdish/French textbook at the site you referenced would have been available from no later than then. It says nothing specifically about the alphabet, but that's much closer to a proper source regarding the legality in that it at least specifically cite legal changes that would have been rather meaningless if the teaching material would still remain illegal. This also fits great with the "idefix.com" website itself - the domain was registered in 2002 according to whois.
It of course still only addresses the issue of current legality, not your original claim that it was never illegal, which - unless you can show us that the Google Translate translation is flat out wrong, or that the purported text of the 1928 law I referenced earlier is fake, is directly contradicted by the law itself.
(At the same time, the report complains that as of writing in 2010, the use of Kurdish by public officials was still likely to result in prosecution - so there is certainly still a long way forward).
The Turkish 'Q' layout is the most commonly used in Turkey and includes these 'illegal' letters. If these letters were truly illegal it'd be hard to imagine this keyboard standard existing.
That's like saying it'd be hard to imagine being able to buy alcohol due to prohibition. But in any case, there little doubt that Turkey has reformed a lot over the last two decades in particular, but the original claim I addressed was the claim that "it was never illegal in Turkey".
I posted a link to a copy of the text of the law in question. Maybe it's an inaccurate copy. Maybe it was repealed before it came into force. Maybe the translation is even more broken than it appears. Yet if so, it ought to be easy for the people that are so insistent that it was never illegal to find documentation, such as the real text of the law, a better translation, or documentation of its repeal. Yet none of that appears to be forthcoming, just a stream of examples of recent usage of the letters from after Turkish society started reforming, 50-60 years or so after the law in question was passed.
It's great if the problem has been rectified. But that is far away from claiming it never existed in the first place.
> That's like saying it'd be hard to imagine being able to buy alcohol due to prohibition.
That really is quite a stretch. I'm imagining the absurdity of internet cafes all over Istanbul hiding their bootleg keyboards during a bust.
It's entirely anecdotal but I have Turkish relatives on one side of my family. They were allowed - encouraged - to learn English and French growing up, so the letters themselves certainly weren't illegal. There was no ban on newspapers or books written in other languages. However Turkish was the only officially recognized language in Turkey and Turkish, literally by definition, does not have those letters.
