Atatürk, who mentioned that the Republic of Turkey rises upon high Turkish culture, attached great importance to culture’s most important component-language. He pioneered in the establishment of Turkic Studies Institution in 1924 and kept a close watch on developments about common language and alphabet in Turkish world by sending a delegate to the First Turcology Congress in Baku in 1926, realized alphabet revolution in 1928 as well. Atatürk pioneered the establishment of Turkish Language Association on July12nd, 1932 to reveal core-beauty of Turkish language and make it raise among world languages.
Right after the establishment of the association, Atatürk gave instructions to make a congress to determine the works that will be done for developing, enriching and nativisation of Turkish. Although the establishment was new, by completing its works in a short time, he made the First Turkish Language Congress gather in Dolmabahçe Palace on September 26th, 1932. General President of the founder and protector of Turkish Language Association, Atatürk participated in all sessions of the congress that lasted for 9 days, listened to all the reports and talked with philologists in the congress recesses. With the attendance of foreign linguistic scientists, around 3 thousand listeners followed the sessions. Poet and author Halit Fahri Ozansoy, who made a petition to department at the end of the congress, suggested that this big meeting is a festivity for Turkish language and for this reason the opening day of the conference, September 26th should be celebrated as Language Festival. This resolution accepted unanimously by the congress members, September 26th started to be celebrated as “Language Festival”. In European Languages Year gathering in 2001, also European Council approved September 26th as the European Languages Day with the suggestion of Turkish Language Association.
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