SCHOOL NOTEBOOKS AND SCRAPBOOKS IN TURKISH,, 1930-1932

Summary: Consists of school notebooks and scrapbooks in Turkish. The books are filled with handwriting exercises and lessons on art, history, economics, mathematics, and penmanship. They also include many pencil and color sketches, as well as collages. Their provenance is unknown, though they are presumably from a school run by the Near East Foundation. On the cover of the notebook in folder 15 is the word "Kemalpasa," the name of a town in Western Turkey, near Izmir (Smyrna), where the Near East Foundation was active at this time.

All the writing is in the Latin alphabet. In 1929, Turkish president Mustafa Kemal Atatürk mandated that Turkish be written in a modified (29-letter) Latin alphabet, making these notebooks early examples of Turkish written in Latin script.