Paul
Goble
Staunton, April 15 – Since Soviet
times, Moscow has promoted the division and linguistic assimilation of the
Turkic peoples under its control, but many of the latter are fighting back with
plans to form common languages either among all of them or among sugroups in
order to be in a better position to resist and to reach out to Turkey.
That resistance faces many
obstacles, including some that have nothing to do with Moscow’s policies such
as variations in the orthographic and phonetic patterns found in this broader
linguistic community. But it is important not only for the survival of these
nations but also as an indication of Moscow’s intentions.
As Ramazan Alpaut of the IdelReal
portal points out in an important article, some Turkic groups are growing in
number while others are declining, according to the Russian census, but in all cases, those speaking the native
languages make up an ever smaller share of these populations (idelreal.org/a/29102022.html).
In recent decades, Moscow has
promoted a linguistic policy specifically aimed at the Turkic nations, Alpaut
says. On the one hand, it has encouraged them to cooperate in ways that allow
this to serve as an attractive advertisement to Turkey. But on the other, it
has insisted that this take place not in a Turkic language but in Russian (idelreal.org/a/29063142.html).
Suher Ecker, a Turcologist at Ankara’s
Bashkent University, says that the Soviets exaggerated the phonetic differences
in the Turkic languages of the Soviet population in order to separate and thus
weaken the Turkic peoples and make them more susceptible to rapid Russian assimilation.
He argues that it would be possible
to develop a single language standard for all of these Turkic peoples, who are
part of the Kipchak group. Such a language would have to be based on Turkish
and not as many assume on Tatar and Bashkir because those two Turkic languages
are orthographically and phonetically more distinct than the other Turkic
tongues.
(Ecker doesn’t say and Alpaut doesn’t
develop the point, but this fact explains some of the reasons why these two
largest Turkic nations within the current borders of the Russian Federation face
particular challenges in extending their influence to other Turkic nationalities
there.)
Tatarstan historian Damir Iskhakov
says that the Soviet policy of changing the alphabets to divide Turkic nations
in some cases had just the opposite effect. In both the Altai and Khasia, he
says, the creation of a literary language had the effect of uniting several
Turkic groups into one nation, the Altai in the first case and the Khakass in
the second.
In contrast to Ecker, the Tatar scholar
argues that Tatar could be modified sufficiently to become a common Turkic
language within the Russian Federation, a basis for unity among that country’s
Turkic nations and at least a half-way house toward the formation of a common
Turkic language worldwide. Bashkir could converge with Tatar as a first step in
this process.
A lot will depend on Moscow’s
policies, he continues. “If Moscow’s interests remain directed at assimilation,
then the implementation of this policy would mean with opposition from the
center. If, however, Moscow sees in this the possibility of extending tis
cultural influence, then the Tatar factor could be used to extend Russia’s
influence.”
A third view on these complicated
issues is offered by Garun-Rashid Guseynov, a socio-linguist from Daghestan,
argues that using Tatar as a base for unity will be difficult because of the specific
vocalism in Tatar and the differences between Tatar and the Turkic languages of
the North Caucasus.
He proposes instead the formation of
a common set of norms for the Kuman subgroup of Turkic languages which include
Kumyk, Karachayevo-Balkar and Crimean Tatar “in combination with Nogay,”
although unifying that grouping would face “problems of a phonetic character.”
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