The Alphabet Wars: Central Asia’s Script Politics

What is an alphabet? On the surface, it’s a simple toolkit of symbols we use to transcribe speech. But dig a little deeper, and you’ll find that a nation’s choice of script is one of the most powerful political statements it can make. It’s a declaration of history, a symbol of allegiance, and a blueprint for the future. Nowhere is this more apparent today than in the vast steppes and ancient cities of Central Asia, where a modern-day “alphabet war” is quietly reshaping national identities.

The battle lines are drawn between two scripts: Cyrillic, the familiar alphabet of the Russian language and a potent symbol of a Soviet past, and Latin, the script of global commerce, the internet, and a perceived Western-oriented future. For former Soviet republics like Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, the move from one to the other is not just a linguistic tweak; it’s a profound, complex, and costly act of decolonization.

A Script Tangled in History

To understand today’s script politics, you have to rewind through a century of upheaval. Before the Bolshevik Revolution, the Turkic languages of Central Asia, like Kazakh and Uzbek, were predominantly written in a Perso-Arabic script. This script connected them to a shared Islamic heritage and a rich literary tradition that stretched across the wider Turkic and Persianate world.

The Soviets, however, saw this connection as a threat. In their quest to forge a new “Soviet Man,” they initiated a two-phase linguistic assault:

1. The Latinization Phase (1920s-1930s): In a move that seems ironic today, the Soviets first pushed for a unified Latin alphabet, known as Yañalif. The goal was twofold: to “modernize” the populace and, crucially, to sever the republics’ ties to their Islamic and Arabic-script past. It was a calculated step to isolate them from their history.
2. The Cyrillic Imposition (Late 1930s-1940s): Just as a generation was getting used to Latin letters, Stalin reversed course. With Moscow’s grip tightening, a mandatory switch to Cyrillic was enforced across the Soviet Union. Each language was given a slightly different version of the alphabet, often designed to be phonetically awkward. This was no accident; it served to “Russify” the republics, make Russian easier to learn, and, most effectively, cut them off from each other and from the burgeoning Republic of Turkey, which had enthusiastically adopted a Latin script in 1928. A generation gap was created, leaving the pre-Soviet Arabic and the brief Latin periods as historical artifacts.

For fifty years, Cyrillic was the unquestioned script of government, education, and literature. It became the alphabet of a shared Soviet experience, but one that was imposed from the outside.

The Great Unscrambling: A New Identity

The collapse of the USSR in 1991 blew the lid off this simmering issue. Suddenly, newly independent nations had a choice. For many, Cyrillic was a linguistic shackle, a constant reminder of Russian dominance. The Latin script, by contrast, offered a symbolic return to the international community and a powerful way to build a post-colonial identity.

Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan were early adopters, switching to Latin in the 1990s. But for the regional giants, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, the path has been far more cautious and contested.

Case Study: Kazakhstan’s Long and Winding Road

Kazakhstan’s journey toward a Latin script has been a masterclass in the complexities of this transition. The decision was first floated in the 2000s, but the process has been slow, deliberate, and marked by several false starts. The challenge is immense: how do you represent the unique sounds of the Kazakh language—sounds that don’t exist in English, like Қ (a deep ‘k’ sound), Ғ (a voiced uvular fricative similar to a French ‘r’), and Ң (like ‘ng’ in “sing”)—in a simple, intuitive Latin form?

An early proposal in 2017 became infamous for its heavy use of apostrophes. The capital city, Astana, would be written as Astana’, and the word for “language,” til, became ti’l. This “apostrophe-bet” was widely ridiculed for being clunky, visually unappealing, and a nightmare for digital typing and searching. The public backlash was so strong that the government went back to the drawing board.

The latest version, approved in 2021, takes a different approach, relying on diacritics (marks like accents and dots) that are more common in other Turkic languages like Turkish. For example:

• Kazakh Ә becomes Ä
• Kazakh Ғ becomes Ğ
• Kazakh Ң becomes Ŋ
• Kazakh Ш (sh) becomes Ş

This version is seen as more elegant and linguistically sound, but the official transition is still planned as a gradual process, scheduled to be completed by 2031. The cautious pace reflects a desire to avoid alienating Kazakhstan’s significant Russian-speaking minority and to manage the immense logistical and financial costs of the change.

Case Study: Uzbekistan’s Two-Track System

Uzbekistan officially adopted a Latin script much earlier, in 1993. However, nearly three decades later, the country exists in a state of script duality. Walk down a street in Tashkent, and you’ll see the messy reality. Shop signs, advertisements, and official government buildings use the new Latin script. But pick up a newspaper, a beloved novel from the 20th century, or watch an older television program, and you’ll find Cyrillic is still very much alive.

The government’s implementation has been inconsistent. For years, schools have taught the Latin alphabet, creating a younger generation that is often more comfortable with it than with Cyrillic. Meanwhile, their parents and grandparents remain native Cyrillic readers, creating a tangible generational divide.

Uzbekistan’s Latin alphabet has also faced criticism. Like Kazakhstan’s failed attempt, it uses awkward combinations. The letter for the “sh” sound is the digraph sh, and for “ch” it is ch. More controversially, it uses an inverted comma (a type of apostrophe) to modify letters, such as oʻ (for the Cyrillic ў) and gʻ (for the Cyrillic ғ). This has led to renewed debate, and in 2021, a new draft proposed replacing these with diacritical marks (like ş, ç, ğ) to align more closely with the “one sound, one letter” principle and the common Turkic model.

The True Cost of Change

The “alphabet wars” are about more than just symbols. The practical hurdles are monumental.

• Economic Cost: Every single textbook, road sign, government form, passport, library book, and legal document must be replaced. The financial burden is astronomical.
• Generational & Cultural Gaps: The shift risks making a century of literature, scientific research, and historical records inaccessible to future generations. Imagine a young Kazakh or Uzbek student being unable to read the works of their great national poets from the Soviet era without special training.
• Digital Logistics: Creating new keyboard layouts, ensuring fonts are universally supported on all devices and platforms, and updating software and search engine algorithms are all significant technical challenges.

A Future Written in a New Script

Despite the immense difficulties, the push for Latinization continues because it is, at its heart, a geopolitical statement. It is a slow, deliberate pivot away from Moscow’s cultural orbit and towards national sovereignty, the wider Turkic world, and the English-dominated global stage.

This is not a simple choice between one set of letters and another. It is a nation deciding how it wants to read its past and write its future. The alphabet wars of Central Asia are a vivid illustration that the letters we use are never neutral—they are laden with the weight of history and the hopes of a nation being reborn.