My Second Reply to Mr. Akay Aktaş

Mr. Akay Aktaş penned an article in his newspaper, “Haftaya Bakış” (Weekly Review), under the title “AN ASSESSMENT OF AZERI-AZERBAIJANI TURKISH DIALECT AND MÜCAHİT ÖZDEN HUN’S WRITINGS IN TOŞABICA.” I hope my writings are perceived not as “an ordinary and low-level polemic,” but rather as an effort to inform the reader about a rarely discussed topic.

First, I personally do not understand what the word “Toşabica” used in the title means. In such an important discussion, it is crucial that the words used are understandable to the average reader. If we stretch the word structures, “Toşabica” would seem to carry a meaning close to a word like “Doşab/Pekmez” (molasses), but what Mr. Akay Aktaş directly or implicitly intends to express with this is still unclear to me. I leave the judgment to my readers.

Now, let’s move on to the general and specific evaluation of the writings… When we evaluate the article within its general framework, I see that none of the theses I clearly put forward in my previous article have been answered; on the contrary, there is an attempt to create confusion and, in a sense, to distance oneself from these theses. My readers can refer to my article titled “My Reply to Haftaya Bakış Newspaper,” published in Yeşil Iğdır newspaper, to see the theses I explicitly stated. I am presenting my “thesis” expressed in that article to the attention of my esteemed readers once again:

“Now, let’s get to the most important point: My main thesis is this: Azerbaijani Turkish/Azeri/Azerbaijani is not a dialect of Anatolian Turkish but an independent language. The same applies to Uzbek, Kyrgyz, Turkmen, Kazakh, and other languages in the Turkic language group. Each of these languages is an independent language. They are not dialects of Turkish.”

There is no tangible answer to this thesis, clearly stated above. Not only is there no answer, but Mr. Akay Aktaş is trying to strike me with words I did not say. There is such a statement in his article:

“Indeed, M. Özden, in his criticism and commentary, refers to all of them as Turkish. Such as Turkey Turkish, North Azerbaijani Turkish, Kyrgyz Turkish.”

I have never used these expressions in any of my writings. As I stated in my thesis presented to your attention above, I used expressions like “Kyrgyz, Uzbek, Kazakh.” I do not consider Mr. Akay Aktaş’s attempt to attribute statements I did not make to me as an ethical stance within the rules of discussion.

Now, let’s move on to a sentence-by-sentence, paragraph-by-paragraph analysis of the article:

Mr. Akay Aktaş establishes a direct relationship between language and nation and states:

“The most important element that makes a nation a nation is language. Other elements come later. We cannot identify a person’s identity by looking at their face or skull. But by their language, we can immediately determine which nation they belong to. At this point, a person’s belonging, which nation they consider themselves to be, is much more important.”

The statement expressed above is not a scientific definition. There are 195 member countries in the United Nations worldwide. There are approximately 6500 spoken languages. I would like to ask this question: How will we understand which nation a person who speaks “English” belongs to? American or British? Which nation is a person who speaks “German” from? German, Austrian, or Swiss? How will we understand which nation a person who speaks “Spanish” belongs to? Spanish, Mexican, Argentinian, Peruvian, Colombian, Chilean, etc.? Establishing a one-to-one relationship between language and nation is unscientific. Likewise, the reverse approach is also unscientific. For example, does each of the 6500 spoken languages have a national equivalent? No, it does not. For example, there is a language called Zapotec spoken by 500,000 people, but there is no Zapotec nation. Mr. Akay Aktaş’s statement, “By their language, we can immediately determine which nation they belong to,” is completely unscientific.

In his second sentence, Mr. Akay Aktaş uses the following expression:

“When we call someone of Iranian Azeri origin an Azeri, they get angry and vehemently emphasize that they are Turkish.”

This is completely wrong. For example, if you meet someone from Tabriz in Germany and ask where they are from, they will first say, “I am Iranian.” As the conversation deepens and you realize they are from Tabriz, if you, as someone from Turkey, curiously ask, “Are you Turkish?”, the answer you will get is definite: “No! I am not Turkish. I am an Iranian Azeri.” During my six months in the Republic of Azerbaijan, no one introduced themselves as “Turkish.” “Turkish” means “Turkish from Turkey.”

In his subsequent sentence, Mr. Akay Aktaş tries to give us a lesson in Turkish. He discusses subjects, verbs, and objects. He states that Turkish and other Turkic languages have an agglutinative language structure. He tries to develop a thesis: Turkic languages are agglutinative languages, or if a language is agglutinative, it is a member of the Turkic language group. I have bad news for Mr. Akay Aktaş in this regard. All the languages listed below have agglutinative language features, and most of them are not part of the Turkic language group:

(Source: Wikipedia)

• Algonquian languages
• Cree
• Blackfoot
• Siouan languages
• Lakota
• Yuchi
• Athabaskan languages
• Muskogean languages
• Quechuan languages
• Aymaran languages
• Salishan languages
• Mesoamerican languages
• Nahuatl
• Wasteko
• Austronesian languages[3]
• Tagalog
• Indonesian
• Javanese
• Niger–Congo languages
• Bantu languages
• Igboid languages
• Luganda
• Berber languages
• Dravidian languages
• Tamil
• Kannada
• Telugu
• Malayalam
• Tulu
• Eskimo–Aleut languages
• Aleut
• Inuktitut
• Yupik
• Kartvelian languages
• Altaic languages (now discredited)
• Turkic languages
• Turkish
• Azerbaijani
• Uzbek
• Kazakh
• Uyghur
• Turkmen
• Kyrgyz
• Tatar
• Yakut
• Bashkir
• Chuvash
• Tungusic languages
• Japanese
• Korean
• Mongolian
• Languages of the Caucasus
• Northwest Caucasian languages
• Northeast Caucasian languages
• Tibeto-Burman languages
• Tibetan (both Classical and Standard)
• Lai
• Uralic languages
• Sámi languages
• Hungarian
• Finnish
• Estonian
• Vasconic languages (putative)
• Basque
• Munda languages
• Santali

Now let’s move on to another sentence by Mr. Akay Aktaş:

“Although the number of words in Turkish seems small, the combinations created increase the number of words in Turkish from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands. The word ‘güzel’ (beautiful) is translated as ‘beautiful’ in English, just as trillions are written with ten digits, or very rich musical works are created with eight notes.”

I have never stated in any of my writings that one language is richer or has more words than another. In this sentence, a “nationalist” sensitivity is implicitly displayed. I found this difficult to understand. According to the generally accepted approach among linguists, the richest language is Korean. This is another topic of discussion. Also, while the word “Beautiful” may have many Turkish equivalents, the reverse is also true. For example, there are over thirty English words for the Turkish word “Zirve” (summit). All these explanations are actually off-topic. Mr. Akay Aktaş is trying to confuse the reader and distract them from the main issue.

Let’s move on to another point: Mr. Akay Aktaş writes:

“It cannot be expected that the race or language of a people living in such a vast geography, establishing states, settling, migrating, boiling, and blending, would be pure or unadulterated.”

No one claims the opposite. I have never stated in any of my writings that languages are “pure.” The exchange of loanwords between languages is natural. Today, the Turkish we use contains thousands of Arabic, Persian, English, Italian, French, etc., words and expressions. But this does not prevent Turkish from being an independent language.

Mr. Akay Aktaş then finally dares to use a correct expression:

“For example, the differences between various dialects of Latin grew so much over time that eventually languages like French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian emerged.”

But for some reason, he cannot write the same thing as, “Dialects developed over time, giving rise to independent languages such as Kyrgyz, Kazakh, and Uzbek,” or he cannot accept my statement in this regard. A difficult situation to understand!

And immediately afterward, he completely disregards the rules of logic and includes the following statement:

“Turkish, which is spoken in a very wide geography extending from the Adriatic Sea to the China Sea, is also divided into many dialects: such as the Anatolian, Azeri, Turkmen dialects of Western Turkish, and the Uzbek dialect, Kazakh dialect, Kyrgyz dialect.”

With this sentence, Mr. Akay Aktaş emphasizes that Uzbek, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, etc., are not independent languages but “dialects.” I am sorry, but this statement is an insult to the speakers of these languages.

Mr. Akay Aktaş states that there are only two independent languages in the Turkic language family:

“The phenomenon of a dialect turning into a separate language is also observed in the Turkic language. Two of the living Turkic dialects have now turned into languages. One of these is Yakut, spoken by the Yakut Turks living on both sides of the Lena River in Siberia, and the other is Chuvash, the language of the Chuvash Turks living where the Kama River meets the Volga in the Middle Volga region.”

This implies that Yakut and Chuvash are independent languages, but Uzbek, Kazakh, and Kyrgyz are not, which again presents us with a completely unscientific approach.

This time, Mr. Akay Aktaş quotes sentences I did not say as if I had said them, and from there, he develops a criticism against me. I quote verbatim:

“Indeed, M. Özden, in his criticism and commentary, refers to all of them as Turkish. Such as Turkey Turkish, North Azerbaijani Turkish, Kyrgyz Turkish. But no one falls into the absurdity of calling the Spanish-Portuguese-Italian languages, which are derived from Latin, ‘Italian Latin’ or similar.”

I have written hundreds of times that Kyrgyz, Uzbek, and Kazakh are independent languages, but Mr. Akay Aktaş, with a bit of “Oriental cunning,” tries to mislead the reader by implying that I used expressions like “Kyrgyz Turkish, etc.” This is not very becoming.

In conclusion, I say this:

Kyrgyz, Uzbek, Kazakh, etc., are independent languages. They may have similar sentence structures because they belong to the Ural-Altaic language group, but this does not negate the fact that they are independent languages.

As I stated in my previous article, there is no “standard” language among Turkic languages like “Hoch Deutsch” or “Fasih Arabic.” A Kyrgyz and an Uzbek communicate not with “Standard Turkish” but with “Russian.”

A similar situation exists among Kurdish languages: five independent languages have emerged in Kurdish. For these to be dialects, there would need to be a “Standard Kurdish” that these five languages could understand each other with, which does not exist. A Zaza and a Kurmanj living in Turkey communicate by speaking “Turkish,” just as a Kyrgyz and an Uzbek communicate by speaking “Russian.”

I wrote before: The issue of language is approached in two ways: linguistic and political.

Mr. Akay Aktaş has confused the two approaches, creating a situation that, in his own words, is “TOŞABICA.”