Ataturk's Reforms Remake Turkish Law, Script, and Society
A new alphabet, a secular constitution, and the end of the caliphate in barely a decade
Quick facts
- Caliphate abolished
- March 1924
- New Latin alphabet adopted
- 1928
- Literacy rate change
- 9 percent to 33 percent within a decade
- Ideology
- Kemalism ("Six Arrows": republicanism, nationalism, populism, statism, secularism, reformism)
What happened
Following the republic's founding, Mustafa Kemal drove through a sweeping program of reforms under the ideology that came to be called Kemalism, built on six principles including republicanism, secularism, and nationalism. The caliphate was abolished in March 1924, ending any formal connection between the Turkish state and Islam, and Islamic religious schools were closed while public education was secularized. In 1928 the government replaced the Arabic-derived Ottoman script with a new Latin alphabet adapted to Turkish, a change Kemal promoted personally, reportedly teaching the new letters himself in an Ankara park. A new civil code adopted European legal models, ending Islamic polygamy and introducing civil marriage, and the country's literacy rate rose from 9 percent to 33 percent within ten years of the reforms beginning.
Why it matters
These reforms reshaped Turkish society more completely and more quickly than any prior Ottoman reform movement had managed, replacing religious law and Ottoman script with secular, European-modeled institutions in barely a decade. The Kemalist model built here, a secular republic run by a strong central state, would define Turkish politics for the rest of the 20th century and remains the reference point against which every later Turkish government, including today's, is measured.
How we know
The Kemalist reform program, including the 1924 abolition of the caliphate, the 1928 alphabet change, and the new civil code, is documented in the Grand National Assembly's own legislative record and detailed in the Library of Congress's Turkey country study, which includes a chronology of the major reforms and their dates.
Sources
- Federal Research Division, Library of Congress. Turkey: A Country Study (Library of Congress Country Studies), Ch. 4 · General sourcecountrystudies.us · Cited as a "reference" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- World History Encyclopedia. Ottoman Empire · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
See something wrong? . Corrections with a source get fixed fastest.
Part of a timelineHistory of Turkey27 events · A land bridge fought over by Hittites, Greeks, Romans, and Turks, and the republic that Mustafa Kemal built on its ashes in a single decadeView all →