Romanisation has not been studied from a comparativeperspective so far, although there are a number ofcase studies that focus on particular speechcommunities. In order to fill this gap in theliterature, the articles in this special issue werefirst presented at a workshop, entitled“Romanisation in Comparative Perspective: ExplainingSuccess and Failure”, held at Bilkent University,Ankara, 5–6 September 2007. The workshop addressedthis theme with the specific aim of explaining whyromanisation has been implemented successfully incertain cases and why it has failed in others.Hailing from diverse disciplines, workshopparticipants brought together a variety ofmethodological approaches, which represented achallenge and an opportunity at the same time. Eachparticipant reassessed the story of a success orfailure within the socio-political and historicalcontext of a particular country or region.

This paper explores the varied reactions of the Turkishliterati and intelligentsia to the adoption of theRoman script imposed by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in1928. Though alphabet reform had been on the agendafor almost 75 years, few intellectuals andbureaucrats had been supportive of romanisation inthe years preceding the move. However after theimplementation of the reform, opponents remainedsilent or were seemingly converted. This articlediscusses the reasons behind the silence andconversion of the elites and the strategies ofopposition developed by more radical defenders ofthe Ottoman script. Finally it records the impact ofthe reform on the literary world and literaryhistoriography.

Like other elements of culture, alphabets have bothpractical and ethnopolitical integrating ordifferentiating significance. Hence, any alphabetchange has serious political implications. Thisarticle will briefly consider the process ofromanisation undertaken in the six newly independentMuslim states that were part of the Soviet Union(Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,Turkmenistan and Tajikistan); and then evaluate itssuccess or failure and attempt to explain the causesfor these phenomena.

Writing systems are used as, and considered to be,important tools and symbols of political discoursesof their time. This article presents a historicaloverview of the alphabet changes in Azerbaijan andshows how the alphabets were associated with thediscourses of modernisation, nationalism andnational identity construction. In the earlytwentieth century, the discussion on the need toshift from the Arabic alphabet to the Roman wasactually an extension of the wider debate onnational identity and language coupled with the willto modernise and progress. In 1940, the Sovietregime imposed the shift from the Roman alphabet tothe Cyrillic in a top-down manner. This change wasneither negotiated nor discussed among theintellectuals and there was almost no room for theexpression of critical views. With the introductionof glasnost and perestroika in the late 1980s,intellectuals started to question to what extent theCyrillic alphabet and the Russian language couldrepresent the Azerbaijani language, civilisation,and national identity. In 1991, Azerbaijan adoptedthe Roman alphabet. The case of Azerbaijan showsthat alphabet changes are symbolic acts to denyand/or reject the previous political and culturalheritage and its legitimacy and tools forundermining its prominence in the new processes oftransformation and change.

The aim of this article is to describe and explainmultiple processes of alphabet reform andromanisation with which Uzbekistan has experimentedsince the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. These reforms,which were debated and implemented in differentsocio-political and cultural contexts, illustrateessentially different stages of politicaldevelopment and experiences. While in the pastreformers tended toward more complicated and rapidreforms, today the scope of change is much moremodest and we meet with changes which are simplerand extended over the long term.

This article will discuss two attempts at theromanisation of Indian languages in the twentiethcentury, one in pre-independence India and thesecond in Pakistan before the Bangladesh war of1971. By way of background, an overview of thestatus of writing in the subcontinent will bepresented in the second section, followed by adiscussion of various earlier attempts in India tochange writing systems, relating mainly to thesituation in Bengal, which has one language and onescript used by two large religious groups – Muslimsand Hindus (in modern-day Bangladesh and WestBengal, respectively). The fourth section will lookat the language/script policy of the Indian NationalCongress in pre-independence days, and attempts tointroduce romanisation, especially the work of theBengali linguist S. K. Chatterji. The penultimatesection deals with attempts to change the writingsystem in East Pakistan, i.e. East Bengal, to (a)the Perso-Arabic script, and (b) the romanscript.

In all cases, the attempt to romanise any of the Indianscripts failed at the national – official – level,although Indian languages do have a conventionaltransliteration. Reasons for the failure will bepresented, in the final section, in terms of İlkerAytürk's model (see this issue), which proposesfactors that may allow – or may not lead to – theimplementation of romanisation.

The alphabet (rōmaji) has never been considered aserious contender for the national script in Japan,although at several points since the country'smodern period began in 1868 supporters have made acase for its adoption on varying grounds, mostnotably those of education, democracy and officeautomation. Although such advocates have includedinfluential scholars and bureaucrats, their combinedintellectual gravitas has never been sufficient toallow their arguments for romanisation to outweighthe strong cultural traditions and ideologies ofwriting centred on the existing three-script writingsystem. Even today, in the face of pressures imposedby modern keyboard technology, discussion of theissue is not on the national agenda. This articleconsiders the place of romanisation in Japan todayand offers a short history of the rōmaji movementsince the late nineteenth century.

This special issue of the Journal has been given overto papers presented in September 2007 at BilkentUniversity, Ankara, during a workshop entitled‘Romanisation in Comparative Perspective: explainingsuccess and failure’. These contributions explore ina number of different historical and geographicalcontexts – Turkey, the ex-Soviet Central Asianstates, South Asia and Japan – the factors that haveinfluenced attempts at implementing script changeand what explains the relative success or failure ofthese ventures. As İlker Aytürk points out in hiseditorial introduction, little work has yet beendone on the comparative aspects of these processesof (attempted) romanisation. But, as he argues, thesignificance of the topic calls out for a frameworkto enable precisely this kind of analysis to takeplace, and so he provides one at the end of his ownarticle, something, it is hoped, that will stimulatefurther discussion in other forums.