How would you translate the Turkish word Devrim, when it comes to the Dil devrimi, started by Atatürk?

I am writing an essay on it for university, and thinking of leaving the word Devrim as it is, in Turkish, because I dont know which tanslation to pick.

In English it is often referred to as reform, but that would imply a perfection or improvement of the language in its actual form, whereas in Turkish not only the alphabet changed, but it also raised some grammatical issues etc. In that case revolution might be the answer, but isnt a revolution supposed to be swift? The dil devrimi is still quietly going on in nowadays turkish..

Devrim can be translated as period too, but I dont think that gives enough credit to its actual meaning..

Please enlighten me what your ideas are abotu this topic. Was it a reform or a revolution and why do you think so?

Can someone also tell me what Tanzimat means?

2 Arabic words were replaced by devrim

Inkilap = devrim (reform)
Ihtilal = devrim (revolution)

Of course you should use reform there.

Tanzimat means (re-)arrangements (in plural).

So actually they gave two differnt words one meaning, devrim?

I came acrros the word inkilap many times, so it is safe to assume that devrim and inkilap mean the same?

Also, Prof. Zeynep Korkmaz uses Dil davası in many of her articles. Does that mean the same or is she merely just referring to the same period of the time.

Devrim : revolution
Evolution : evrim

Tanzimat: Tidying up, improvements

I heard something like this from an instructor when I had the class about revolutions in Turkish history;

"Devrim" has the root of "devirmek", like "overset", "overturn". "Devrim" means to overset the system and put a new one from the beginning without caring the older system. For that reason, you may think it as reform or revolution. The most important point of devrim is there must not any track from the older system, so it must be gone far away.

As you see the language reform of Turkey, you can see many packages have the same idea such as letters (alphabet).

thanks! If I ever manage to write something about it, Ill translate it and post it up here. It is really interesting and I think most people arent aware of the fact that Turkish has changed soooo much even in the last half a century! I think for çağdaş Turkish youth, it is impossible to read the middle-osmanlıca texts, even if one would transcribe them to Latin alphabet!

Well, I think that it was a good change. It did have some down-sides, but Osmanlı Turkish, didnt match the Turkish language at all. It wasnt only Arabic and Persian words that got adapted in the system, but also their grammar rules and their suffixes. So a language filled with strange grammar constructions was constructed. Also, the arabic alphabet, doesnt match the sounds of the turkish language. It lacks letters and made reading nearly impossible. Because barely anyone used diacritic points, You could get sentences such as:

Mehmet paşa oldu
Mehmet Paşa öldü.

Two entirely different meanings, not to mention the word ün, un, on, ön.. There are more than these 3 variations because sometiems an N was also written with the arabic K, and then the U like a Waw, then you can get combinations like evin too. The language was too difficult for the population and the distance between the aydınlar and population, the konuşma and the yazma dili became bigger and bigger. I think the changes were good, though Atatürk did some strange stuff (such as Güneş Dil teorisi and trying to find turkish etymologies for ALL foreing words).

Besides, in Greece the language from the ancient greeks differs much too. I can read ancient greek but not understand modern greek. In Greek highschools I think all students get lessons. Im surprised it is not like this in Turkey, but I think that it is still under the effect of the inkilap.

yes deli-kızın, I also think this revolutionn was needed, but it resulted in a significant less number of words to be used.
For example we are using mutlu instead of neşeli, bahtiyar, berhudar, mesut... In fact all these were expressing a different state of happiness, but today we are just mutlu