Bye Bye Turkish/A New York Dream (Book)

"Bye Bye Türkçe: Bir Nev-York Rüyası", Turkish scientist and linguist Oktay Sinanoğlu authored this book. It was published in 2006 by Alfa Yayınları. Sinanoğlu gained international recognition in the scientific community after becoming a professor at the age of 26 and was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry twice. At the same time, as an active advocate for the preservation and development of the Turkish language, in this work Sinanoğlu questions the importance and future of Turkish.

^{Oktay Sinanoğlu} (AA)

The first section of the book, "A New York Dream," recounts the author’s dream set in the year 2050 in New York. In the dream, he encounters businesses and educational institutions with Turkish names on the streets of New York and observes that Turkish has become a global language. A conversation he has with an Irish-American discusses the rise of Turkish and the decline of the West. The Irish-American explains that since the beginning of the 21st century, Turks have grown economically stronger while Europe and America have weakened. He describes how the Turkish language and culture have spread, how Türkiye now educates Western students in its own universities and requires them to learn Turkish, and how Turkish language schools in the United States have become widespread and increasingly important. However, it becomes clear that the country referred to as "America" in the dream is in fact Türkiye; this inversion can be interpreted as a critique of Türkiye’s current language policies and cultural orientations.

In this work, Sinanoğlu brings together various articles, interviews, and conference texts to emphasize the importance of the Turkish language. The book argues that language is not merely a tool of communication but a carrier of a nation’s identity and culture. Drawing on Atatürk’s language and education policies, the author criticizes the pressure Turkish faces from foreign languages today and advocates for the establishment of a national language policy.