Between Scripts: Typography, Multilingualism, and Modernity in Late Ottoman Turkish Print Culture

This article examines the typographic and multilingual print culture of the late Ottoman Empire, situating it within broader debates on cultural identity, modernization, and visual representation. While the 1928 Alphabet Reform has often been studied primarily as a political or linguistic project, this study emphasizes the interplay between material infrastructures and cultural meanings that made reform feasible. It argues that the mechanical limitations of Arabic-script typography—such as labor-intensive typesetting, limited stylistic variety, and fragile metal types—combined with state monopolization of type production, created a constrained environment for print. At the same time, the pervasive circulation of Latin script in minority presses, textbooks, advertising, ephemeral documents, and urban signage cultivated a visual familiarity that resonated with everyday practices and associated Latin letters with commerce, education, and modernity. Methodologically, the study employs historical discourse analysis and a selective sampling of archival documents, periodicals, and ephemeral print materials to reconstruct the typographic and print environment of the late Ottoman Empire. By drawing on sources from the Ottoman Archives, contemporary newspapers, and visual ephemera, it demonstrates how typography functioned not only as a technical medium but also as a semiotic force that mediated ideas of Westernization and collective identity. The findings suggest that the Alphabet Reform should be understood as a historically contingent convergence of material constraints and cultural re-significations, where typography operated simultaneously as a limitation and as an opportunity in the remaking of national identity.