By the decision of the Turkish government, Ottoman Turkish in Arabic must be taught as a mandatory subject in Turkey’s public schools. The Ministry of Education justified the decision, saying that the Turks can’t read the inscriptions on the tombstones of their ancestors. However, experts say this decision is the simple continuation of Erdogan’s policy on Islamizing the country, reports Ermenihaber.am.

Columnist for the Turkish Bugyun newspaper Aykut Esheklar has touched upon the topic and draws readers’ attention to the consequences that mandatory teaching of Ottoman Turkish will have.

In his article entitled “Don’t Feel Bad When You Read the Inscriptions On your Ancestors’ Graves and Learn the Bitter Truth”, Esheklar mentions that it seems as though the issue of teaching Ottoman Turkish has emerged due to the lack of social or economic issues in the country. The active debates of the past week remind the author of debates in yards, not academic debates.

“Ottoman Turkish was the official language of the empire that was dominant on three continents. Now there are dozens of countries in the territories of the Ottoman Empire in which the people speak their respective languages and believe in nationalism,” Esheklar notes, adding that the teaching of the Arabic alphabet and Ottoman Turkish means burning the hundreds of thousands of books because the emergence of Ottoman Turkish will make people forget the solid information that they have learned by heart.

“Wouldn’t you feel bad, if you found out that several pieces of information presented to us in textbooks and encyclopedias are false? For instance, wouldn’t you be amazed if you suddenly found out that a very prominent architect in our history was Armenian? Perhaps you find out that that architect has always participated in the raids of Ottoman Sultans, built bridges for the army, was a hero and a patriotic person. If we start learning Ottoman Turkish, we’ll forget many truths that we have learned by heart. You talk about palatial music. As soon as you learn about the people who created the valuable Turkish songs, you’ll be amazed if you find out that in that period, the Turks only played the pipe and the drum and performed the horon (round-dance) in central Anatolia. As soon as you start reading books in Ottoman Turkish, you’ll see that the greatest composers of Turkish music were Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians or Persians,” the Turkish columnist warns.

The columnist mentions that the same goes for the national meals that are considered a part of Turkish cuisine. By reading in Ottoman Turkish, Turks might find out that those meals are part of Armenian cuisine or are meals made by representatives of other ethnic minorities.

Summing up his predictions on the surprising revelations in relation to the teaching of Ottoman Turkish, Esheklar writes: “Whoever says he or she is ready to read the inscriptions on his or her ancestor’s grave must be ready for everything. We might be very surprised.”

Let us remind that when the founding President of the Republic of Turkey Mustafa Kemal Ataturk was establishing the order of a mundane state, he terminated the use of Arabic and enshrined the Latin alphabet in 1923.