The policy of persecution of non-Turkish peoples carried out for centuries in the Ottoman Empire did not bypass the linguistic sphere either. Naturally, the main goal of this policy was to force all non-Turkic peoples living in the territory of the empire to stop using and forget their native language and use Turkish (Ottoman) instead. Socio-political developments related to language became more active in the Ottoman Empire from the early 19th century onwards, especially alongside the Tanzimat reforms, when intellectuals attempted to simplify the difficult Ottoman language, these efforts reached another objective: to increase geography and the level of Turkish language. In 1876, Turkish (Ottoman) was first granted the status of an official state language by the newly adopted Ottoman constitution.

Elaborate measures aimed at imposing the Turkish language were even more evident at the beginning of the 20th century, during the rule of the Young Turks, and the struggle against the languages of non-Turkic peoples began to acquire a state-organized character.