The languages of

Turkey Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with a small portion on the Balkan Peninsula ...

, apart from the

official language An official language is a language given supreme status in a particular country, state, or other jurisdiction. Typically the term "official language" does not refer to the language used by a people or country, but by its government (e.g. judiciary, ...

Turkish, include the widespread Kurdish (

Kurmanji Kurmanji ( ku, کورمانجی, lit=Kurdish, translit=Kurmancî, also termed Northern Kurdish, is the northern dialect of the Kurdish languages, spoken predominantly in southeast Turkey, northwest and northeast Iran, northern Iraq, northern Sy ...

), the moderately prevalent minority languages

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...

and

Zazaki Zaza or Zazaki (), is an Iranian language spoken primarily in eastern Turkey by the Zazas. The language is a part of the Zaza–Gorani language group of the northwestern group of the Iranian branch. The glossonym Zaza originated as a pejorativ ...

, and a number of less common minority languages, some of which are guaranteed by the 1923

Treaty of Lausanne The Treaty of Lausanne (french: Traité de Lausanne) was a peace treaty negotiated during the Lausanne Conference of 1922–23 and signed in the Palais de Rumine, Lausanne, Switzerland, on 24 July 1923. The treaty officially settled the confl ...

History

Turkey has historically been the home to many now extinct languages. These include Hittite, the earliest Indo-European language for which written evidence exists (circa 1600 BCE to 1100 BCE when the

Hittite Empire The Hittites () were an Anatolian people who played an important role in establishing first a kingdom in Kussara (before 1750 BC), then the Kanesh or Nesha kingdom (c. 1750–1650 BC), and next an empire centered on Hattusa in north-centr ...

existed). The other

Anatolian languages The Anatolian languages are an extinct branch of Indo-European languages that were spoken in Anatolia, part of present-day Turkey. The best known Anatolian language is Hittite, which is considered the earliest-attested Indo-European langua ...

included

Luwian The Luwians were a group of Anatolian peoples who lived in central, western, and southern Anatolia, in present-day Turkey, during the Bronze Age and the Iron Age. They spoke the Luwian language, an Indo-European language of the Anatolian sub-fam ...

and later Lycian, Lydian and

Milyan Milyan, also known as Lycian B and previously Lycian 2, is an extinct ancient Anatolian language. It is attested from three inscriptions: two poems of 34 and 71 engraved lines, respectively, on the so-called Xanthian stele (or Xanthian ...

. All these languages are believed to have become extinct at the latest around the 1st century BCE due to the

Hellenization Hellenization (other British spelling Hellenisation) or Hellenism is the adoption of Greek culture, religion, language and identity by non-Greeks. In the ancient period, colonization often led to the Hellenization of indigenous peoples; in the ...

Anatolia Anatolia, tr, Anadolu Yarımadası), and the Anatolian plateau, also known as Asia Minor, is a large peninsula in Western Asia and the westernmost protrusion of the Asian continent. It constitutes the major part of modern-day Turkey. The re ...

which led to Greek in a variety of dialects becoming the common language. Urartian belonging to the Hurro-Urartian language family existed in eastern Anatolia around

Lake Van Lake Van ( tr, Van Gölü; hy, Վանա լիճ, translit=Vana lič̣; ku, Gola Wanê) is the largest lake in Turkey. It lies in the far east of Turkey, in the provinces of Van and Bitlis in the Armenian highlands. It is a saline soda lake ...

. It existed as the language of the kingdom of

Urartu Urartu (; Assyrian: ',Eberhard Schrader, ''The Cuneiform inscriptions and the Old Testament'' (1885), p. 65. Babylonian: ''Urashtu'', he, אֲרָרָט ''Ararat'') is a geographical region and Iron Age kingdom also known as the Kingdom of V ...

from about the 9th century BCE until the 6th century. Hattian is attested in Hittite ritual texts but is not related to the Hittite language or to any other known language; it dates from the 2nd millennium BCE. In the post-

Tanzimat The Tanzimat (; ota, تنظيمات, translit=Tanzimāt, lit=Reorganization, ''see'' nizām) was a period of reform in the Ottoman Empire that began with the Gülhane Hatt-ı Şerif in 1839 and ended with the First Constitutional Era in 187 ...

period French became a common language among educated people, even though no ethnic group in the empire natively spoke French.
info page on book
at

Martin Luther University Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg (german: Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg), also referred to as MLU, is a public, research-oriented university in the cities of Halle and Wittenberg and the largest and oldest university in ...

) // CITED: p. 26 (PDF p. 28): "French had become a sort of semi-official language in the Ottoman Empire in the wake of the ''Tanzimat'' reforms. ..t is true that French was not an ethnic language of the Ottoman Empire. But it was the only Western language which would become increasingly widespread among educated persons in all linguistic communities." Johann Strauss, author of "Language and power in the late Ottoman Empire," wrote that "In a way reminiscent of English in the contemporary world, French was almost omnipresent in the Ottoman lands." (, 9781317118459), p
122
Strauss also stated that French was "a sort of semi-official language", (, 9781317118442),

Google Books Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical ...

br>PT192
which "to some extent" had "replaced Turkish as an 'official' language for non-Muslims". (, 9781317118442),

br>PT193
Therefore late empire had multiple French-language publications, and several continued to operate when the Republic of Turkey was declared in 1923. However French-language publications began to close in the 1930s.

Constitutional rights

Official language

Article 3 of the

Constitution of Turkey The Constitution of the Republic of Turkey ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Anayasası), also known as the Constitution of 1982, is Turkey's fundamental law. It establishes the organization of the government and sets out the principles and rules of ...

defines Turkish as the official language of

Minority language rights

Article 42 of the Constitution explicitly prohibits educational institutions to teach any language other than Turkish as a mother tongue to Turkish citizens. Due to Article 42 and its longtime restrictive interpretation, ethnic minorities have been facing severe restrictions in the use of their

mother language A first language, native tongue, native language, mother tongue or L1 is the first language or dialect that a person has been exposed to from birth or within the critical period. In some countries, the term ''native language'' or ''mother ton ...

s. Concerning the incompatibility of this provision with the International Bill of Human Rights, Turkey signed the International Covenants on Civil and Political Rights and on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights only with reservations constraining

minority rights Minority rights are the normal individual rights as applied to members of racial, ethnic, class, religious, linguistic or gender and sexual minorities, and also the collective rights accorded to any minority group. Civil-rights movements ...

and the

right to education The right to education has been recognized as a human right in a number of international conventions, including the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights which recognizes a right to free, compulsory primary education for ...

. Furthermore, Turkey hasn't signed either of the

Council of Europe The Council of Europe (CoE; french: Conseil de l'Europe, ) is an international organisation founded in the wake of World War II to uphold human rights, democracy and the rule of law in Europe. Founded in 1949, it has 46 member states, with a p ...

's Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, the

European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages The European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (ECRML) is a European treaty (CETS 148) adopted in 1992 under the auspices of the Council of Europe to protect and promote historical regional and minority languages in Europe. However, th ...

, or the anti-discrimination Protocol 12 to the European Convention on Human Rights. Galatapostcard

This particular constitutional provision has been contested both internationally and within Turkey. The provision has been criticized by minority groups, notably the Kurdish community. In October 2004, the Turkish State's Human Rights Advisory Board called for a constitutional review in order to bring Turkey's policy on minorities in line with international standards, but was effectively muted. It was also criticized by EU member states, the

OSCE The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) is the world's largest regional security-oriented intergovernmental organization with observer status at the United Nations. Its mandate includes issues such as arms control, prom ...

, and international human rights organizations, including

Human Rights Watch Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an international non-governmental organization, headquartered in New York City, that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. The group pressures governments, policy makers, companies, and individual human ...

who observe that "the Turkish government accepts the language rights of the Jewish, Greek and Armenian minorities as being guaranteed by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne. But the government claims that these are Turkey's only minorities, and that any talk of minority rights beyond this is just separatism".

Supplementary language education

In 2012, the

Ministry of Education An education ministry is a national or subnational government agency politically responsible for education. Various other names are commonly used to identify such agencies, such as Ministry of Education, Department of Education, and Ministry of Pub ...

included Kurdish (based on both

and

dialects) to the academic programme of the basic schools as optional classes from the fifth year on. Later, the Ministry of Education also included Abkhaz, Adyghe, Standard Georgian, and Laz languages in 2013, and Albanian as well as Bosnian languages in February 2017. In 2015, the Turkey’s Ministry of Education announced that as of the 2016-17 academic year,

courses (as a second language) will be offered to students in elementary school starting in second grade. The Arabic courses will be offered as an elective language course like

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...

French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...

and

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ...

. According to a prepared curriculum, second and third graders will start learning Arabic by listening-comprehension and speaking, while introduction to writing will join these skills in fourth grade and after fifth grade students will start learning the language in all its four basic skills.

Statistics

1965 Census

File:Mother language in 1965 Turkey census - Turkish and Kurdish.png, Turkish- and Kurdish-speaking pluralities File:Mother language in 1965 Turkey census - Turkish.png, Turkish-speaking population File:Mother language in 1965 Turkey census - Kurdish.png, Kurdish-speaking population File:Mother language in 1965 Turkey census - Arabic.png, Arabic-speaking population File:Mother language in 1965 Turkey census - Zaza.png, Zaza-speaking population File:Mother language in 1965 Turkey census - Circassian.png, Circassian-speaking population File:Mother language in 1965 Turkey census - Greek.png, Greek-speaking population File:Mother language in 1965 Turkey census - Armenian.png, Armenian-speaking population File:Mother language in 1965 Turkey census - Georgian.png, Georgian-speaking population File:Mother language in 1965 Turkey census - Laz.png, Laz-speaking population File:Mother language in 1965 Turkey census - Pomak.png, Pomak-speaking population File:Mother language in 1965 Turkey census - Bosniak.png, Bosnian-speaking population File:Mother language in 1965 Turkey census - Albanian.png, Albanian-speaking population File:Mother language in 1965 Turkey census - Jewish.png, Ladino-speaking population

KONDA, 2006

The following table lists the mother tongues of people in Turkey by percentage of their speakers.

Ethnologue, 2009

Ethnologue ''Ethnologue: Languages of the World'' (stylized as ''Ethnoloɠue'') is an annual reference publication in print and online that provides statistics and other information on the living languages of the world. It is the world's most comprehensi ...

'' lists many minority and immigrant languages in

some of which are spoken by large numbers of people. Not included in the report by ''Ethnologue'' is the

Megleno-Romanian language Megleno-Romanian (known as by its speakers and Megleno-Romanian or Meglenitic and sometimes Moglenitic or Meglinitic by linguists) is a Balkan Romance language, similar to Aromanian or a dialect of the Romanian language. It is spoken by the ...

, spoken by the

Megleno-Romanians The Megleno-Romanians, also known as Meglenites ( ruq, Miglinits), Moglenite Vlachs or simply Vlachs ( ruq, Vlaș), are a small Eastern Romance people, originally inhabiting seven villages in the Moglena region spanning the Pella and Kilkis ...

, who number around 5,000 in the country. aExpanded Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale (EGIDS) of ''Ethnologue'':
0 (International): "The language is widely used between nations in trade, knowledge exchange, and international policy."
1 (National): "The language is used in education, work, mass media, and government at the national level."
2 (Provincial): "The language is used in education, work, mass media, and government within major administrative subdivisions of a nation."
3 (Wider Communication): "The language is used in work and mass media without official status to transcend language differences across a region."
4 (Educational): "The language is in vigorous use, with standardization and literature being sustained through a widespread system of institutionally supported education."
5 (Developing): "The language is in vigorous use, with literature in a standardized form being used by some though this is not yet widespread or sustainable."
6a (Vigorous): "The language is used for face-to-face communication by all generations and the situation is sustainable."
6b (Threatened): "The language is used for face-to-face communication within all generations, but it is losing users."
7 (Shifting): "The child-bearing generation can use the language among themselves, but it is not being transmitted to children."
8a (Moribund): "The only remaining active users of the language are members of the grandparent generation and older."
8b (Nearly Extinct): "The only remaining users of the language are members of the grandparent generation or older who have little opportunity to use the language."
9 (Dormant): "The language serves as a reminder of heritage identity for an ethnic community, but no one has more than symbolic proficiency."
10 (Extinct): "The language is no longer used and no one retains a sense of ethnic identity associated with the language."

Ethnologue, 2022

The following languages are listed as having 50,000 or more total speakers in Turkey according to the 2022 edition of ''

''. Entries identified by ''Ethnologue'' as macrolanguages (such as

, Persian,

Pashto Pashto (,; , ) is an Eastern Iranian language in the Indo-European language family. It is known in historical Persian literature as Afghani (). Spoken as a native language mostly by ethnic Pashtuns, it is one of the two official langua ...

, Chinese, and

Zaza Zaza may refer to: Ethnic group * Zazas, a group of people in eastern Anatolia (southeastern Turkey) * Zaza–Gorani languages, Indo-Iranian languages ** Zaza language, spoken by the Zazas People Given name * Zaza Sor. Aree (born 1993), Thai kic ...

, encompassing all their respective

varieties Variety may refer to: Arts and entertainment Entertainment formats * Variety (radio) * Variety show, in theater and television Films * ''Variety'' (1925 film), a German silent film directed by Ewald Andre Dupont * ''Variety'' (1935 film), ...

) are not included in this section.