The First Turkological Congress (Baku, 1926)

In the mid-19th century Mirza Fatali Akhundov wrote that the Arabic script did not suit the Turkic languages and proposed a new alphabet. The question returned in the Soviet period: in 1922 a New Turkic Alphabet Committee was set up in Baku, and in 1923 Azerbaijan adopted a Latin-based alphabet as its state alphabet.

The First All-Union Turkological Congress was held in Baku from 26 February to 6 March 1926. It brought together 131 delegates: scholars and writers of the Turkic peoples of the Soviet Union, the Russian Turkologists Vasily Bartold, Alexander Samoylovich and Sergey Oldenburg, Mehmed Fuad Köprülüzade from Turkey, Theodor Menzel from Germany and others. The congress was chaired by Samad agha Agamalioglu, head of Azerbaijan's Central Executive Committee.

The congress recommended that the Turkic peoples adopt the Latin script and discussed spelling, terminology and the literary language. Within a few years the Turkic peoples of the USSR switched to the Latin alphabet. But in 1937-1938 most of the participants were accused of "Pan-Turkism" and repressed, and in 1939-1940 the Latin alphabet was replaced by Cyrillic.