Minister Ersoy: Protecting Turkish means protecting our independence

Minister of Culture and Tourism Mehmet Nuri Ersoy attended the '2026 Turkish Language Service Awards' program held at the Atatürk Higher Institution of Culture, Language and History within the scope of the 26 September Turkish Language Day. Minister Ersoy said, "Turkish is not just a language for us, it is the carrier of our thousands of years of history, civilization and common values. In the words of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of our Republic, the Turkish language is the heart and mind of the Turkish nation. Since the 1st Turkish Language Congress held on September 26, 1932, historical steps have been taken to protect and develop Turkish, the native language and identity of our nation. This is our duty today." "It is to pass on our precious heritage to our future in the strongest possible way," he said.

Stating that steps have been taken to increase the prestige of Turkish in the world under the leadership of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in the last 24 years, Ersoy said, "In this way, the voice of our Turkish is being conveyed to all corners of the world. Today, our Turkish is becoming the common language of a wide geography of hearts extending not only from Edirne to Kars, but also from the Adriatic to the Great Wall of China. From Tokyo to Washington, from Sarajevo to Skopje, thousands of foreign young people are learning our beautiful Turkish. "If anyone is learning, this is the result of the determined steps taken. With TIKA, we are keeping the linguistic and cultural heritage of the Turkish world and our heartland alive. We are advancing our linguistic heritage by restoring Turkish written monuments in our ancestral works abroad, from the Orkhon Monuments Museum to the ancestral heirlooms in the Balkans," he said.

Stating that the importance of Turkish has increased in education, foreign relations and public diplomacy, Ersoy said, "The path that İsmail Gaspiralı started with the principle of 'Unity in language, work and thought' is gradually becoming a concrete reality thanks to the strong cooperation and common will displayed by our President within the Organization of Turkic States. The agreement reached on the common Turkish alphabet stands before us as one of the most concrete and meaningful steps of our common language and common future goal."

Minister Nuri Ersoy said, "It is our duty to protect and develop our Turkish language against social media language, foreign word invasion, misuses, signs, advertisements, workplaces and daily habits. Those who cannot produce their own concepts are forced to think with the concepts of others. From our families to our public institutions, we must all use our Turkish correctly, beautifully and carefully. Protecting Turkish means protecting our future, independence and values."

Referring to the work of TDK, Osman Mert, President of the Turkish Language Association (TDK), said, "We carry out important projects with the support of our esteemed managers in a wide range of areas, from lexicographers to term studies, from linguistics research to Turkish world current language research, artificial intelligence and language model studies. We are working to represent Turkish accurately and effectively in artificial intelligence algorithms, databases and the digital world in accordance with the requirements of the digital age. Because we know that the future of a language is no longer only in books and dictionaries; it is in data, "It is shaped in algorithms and artificial intelligence," he said.