World Celebrates Turkic Languages Day for First Time

The international community is celebrating the World Turkic Languages Day for the first time on December 15.

The decision was adopted at UNESCO’s General Conference held in Samarkand, Uzbekistan in November, The Caspian Post reports via UN website.

The chosen date is deeply symbolic, as on December 15, 1983, Danish linguist Vilhelm Thomsen announced the successful decipherment of the Orkhon inscriptions-one of the oldest known written sources of Turkic languages. These inscriptions were created by ancient Turkic peoples in the 8th century in the Orkhon Valley, located in present-day Mongolia, and were discovered in 1889.

Thomsen’s breakthrough provided invaluable insight into a linguistic tradition that today connects dozens of communities across Eurasia.

Languages of the Turkic family-including Azerbaijani, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Turkish, Turkmen, and Uzbek-are spoken by more than 200 million people across a territory spanning around 12 million square kilometers. A rich written heritage and vibrant oral traditions in Turkic languages are shared by more than 10 countries.

The initiative to establish the World Turkic Languages Day was put forward by Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Türkiye, and Uzbekistan, and received the support of 21 countries.