CONTEMPORARY EURASIA VOLUME VI (1) Contemporary-Eurasia-VI-1-engl | Página 112

CONTEMPORARY EURASIA VI (1)
have existed in Kazakhstan since the 1990s. In 1992 the director of the
Institute of Languages of Academy of Sciences of Kazakhstan and
chairman of Qazaq tili organization Abdulai Qaydarov raised the
question of alphabet change, and in 1995 Turkologist Musaev came
out with an initiative to combine elements of Kazakh Latin scripts and
Turkish Latin scripts 17 . However, in 1996 State Committee for
Nationalities Policy took a first official decision about the introduction
of the Latin script in 1996 18 . The issues of alphabet change entered
into political agenda in 2006 when President Nazarbayev spoke about
the necessity of moving the Kazakh alphabet to Latin script 19 . This
decision is an essential issue to understand ethnic aspirations of
Kazakhstani elite. In 2012 the Latinization of Kazakh alphabet was
recognized by president Nazarbayev as an essential aspect for
modernization of Kazakh language, and as he mentioned: “from 2025
we need to modernize our language to use Latin fonts and a Latin
alphabet” 20 . Of course, there would be various difficulties connected
with existing Cyrillic based published literature, but the State
Terminology Commission established in 1998 21 will work in an
attempt to modernize and adopt terminology to Kazakh Latin
alphabet. Thus, the replacement of Kazakh alphabet is a long-run but
strategically important decision for Kazakhstan regarding country’s
integration into the global world. It seems that Kazakh Latin alphabet
will give opportunities to Kazakhs to overcome the Russian (Soviet)
colonial consciousness and to give birth to new national and sovereign
identity among the Kazakhs. Thus, on 27 October 2017 President
17
See: Landau J. M. and Kellner-Heinkele B., Politics of Language in the Ex-
Soviet Muslim States: Azerbayjan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,
Turkmenistan and Tajikistan, C. Hurst & Co. Publishers, 2001, p.140.
18
Ibid, p. 141.
19
Tanayeva L., "The Politics of the Latin alphabet in Kazakhstan”, The Annual
of Language & Politics and Politics of Identity, 2017, p. 79.
20
Official Site of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan, Events of
14.12.2012, Address by the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan, Leader of
the Nation, N. Nazarbayev, Strategy “Kazakhstan-2050”: New Political Course
of the Established State.
21
Matuszkiewicz R., op. cit., p. 220.
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