LANGUAGE POLICIES AND LANGUAGE EDUCATION IN THE PERIOD OF SULTAN ABDULHAMID II: EXAMPLES FROM THE YILDIZ PALACE LIBRARY COLLECTION

Abstract

One of the issues at the heart of the Ottoman Empire throughout history was education, bearing in mind that education is the guarantee of a nation's progress. The biggest breakthrough in the field of educationin the Ottoman Empire took place during and after the reign of Abdulhamid II. In this period, the language of education and instructionwas an important issue in the studies conducted for the dissemination of educational institutions throughout the country. In addition to ArabicLanguage, the necessity of learning western languages emerged from the times when the Ottoman Empire's relations with the western stateshad begun to gain tractionowing to political developments. In modern schools, some western languages were introduced, especially the Frenchlanguage.