Measuring Assimilation: 'Mother Tongue' Question in Turkish Censuses and Nationalist Policy

Abstract

This article aims to examine how the Turkish census measures, classifies and interprets the languages spoken in Turkey. By examining the non-standardised relationship between 'mother tongue', 'domestic language' and 'ethnicity', the article analyses the ongoing and dynamic milieu that surrounds the fixed questions and clear-cut classifications of data. This article argues that the ethnic measurement is not a 'fixed' measurement, because the wording of the linguistic question and the data categorisation as well as the interpretation of the data has been changing.