The first records of deaf individuals or deaf communities in Anatolia date back three millennia to the time of the Hittites. It is known that at a later time, starting in the 15th century and continuing until the mid 19th century, there was a sign language used in the Ottoman court by ‘mutes’, which even became popular among the hearing people in the Royal Palace, most notably among the Sultans. Whether this sign language was an earlier form of contemporary TİD, or, for that matter, of any other sign language of a deaf community is unknown.
Turkish Sign Language (TİD), as far as the historical evidence suggests, dates back to the late Ottoman era. In 1889 during the reign of Abdülhamid II and at a time following educational reforms, an Austrian merchant of İstanbul (Constantinople at the time) named Ferdi Grati took it upon himself to establish a school for the deaf and blind. This was also the times during which a guild was established to train deaf people in practical skills to become craftsmen and traders. The İstanbul School for the Mute and the Blind, an annex to the Sultanahmet Business School, had a curriculum planned to cover Turkish (Ottoman), French, mathematics, geometry, drawing, calligraphy, geography, history, and art classes. In this school there were both oral education and a ‘manual department’ of instruction, and there was a deaf instructor, an art teacher called İstavraki Efendi. Fingerspelling was used, an adaptation of French fingerspelling to the Ottoman (Arabic) alphabet as shown in the photograph below. Here the students are each fingerspelling one letter of the mantra Long Live the Sultan.
Fingerspelling of “Long live the Sultan!” by students of the School for the Mute and the Blind.
Original image from Servet-i Fünun Journal; August 19, 1893, In Deringil, 2002, p.249.
As the school had a ‘manual’ department and an ‘oral’ department, there was probably bilingual education in sign language and Turkish. A letter of complaint indicates that sign language may have been used. This was a letter sent by a student to the Ministry of Education of the time for the lack of knowledge on the part of the instructors, of the language of the mutes.
The other important figure at the school was Pascal Pekmezian from İstanbul, a highly informed deaf educator and fund-raiser who was educated at the Paris School for the Deaf. However, the efforts to form a system with long lasting consequences were to be short-lived. There were various setbacks resulting from the political turmoil and uncertainty of the late nineteenth, early twentieth centuries, and even by 1893 there were only 22 students and five teachers left at the İstanbul School for the Mute and the Blind. It was eventually closed down in 1926, six years after the Ottoman Empire dissolved, and the remaining students were moved to the İzmir Institution for the Deaf-Mute and the Blind (Sağır Dilsiz ve Körler Müessesesi). It is not known whether TİD was used in this school as a medium of education, but it would be unlikely due to the oralist agenda of Necati Kemal, the head of the school. Still the teachers presumably had some autonomy, and they may have learned sign language from the students and used it. Teachers learning sign language (sometimes even the oralist teachers) is a recurrent theme in interviews with elderly deaf signers and current teachers in deaf schools. It is certain that TİD still existed as a language at the time among the students. One of Necati Kemal’s books published in 1926 describes the signs of a few students and these match contemporary TİD signs.
The İzmir School for the Mute was established by another former pupil from the Paris School for the Deaf, Albert Carmona. This school seems to be privately funded and established in 1906 or 1910, but in 1923 or in 1926 - the dates vary from one source to another - it was taken over by the Ministry of Public Health. In 1909, another short-lived school was founded in Thessaloniki by yet another former pupil of the Paris School for the Deaf, Edgard Farragi. This school had around 50 students, but closed down in 1913 at the time of the Balkan wars.
Deaf Schools in the late Ottoman period and the Republic of Turkey (Adapted from İlkbaşaran & Taşçı, 2012).
Another school, the Martha King Memorial School for the Deaf (King School for the Deaf) was founded in 1910 in Merzifon, a predominantly Armenian and Greek town, as an annex to the Anatolia College and American Girls’ School run by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. It was the first ‘Christian School for the Deaf in the Ottoman Empire’ and the only school for the Deaf in central Anatolia. It was established through the funds provided by Clarke School for the Deaf in Northampton, Massachusetts and American Associations for the Promotion of Speech among the Deaf. The school was named after Martha King, a missionary in Merzifon after her premature death from smallpox in 1895. Her name was associated with the school as a tribute to the care she provided for underprivileged children, especially for those who were living in the area where the first deaf student of the school, Theodorus, lived. The director of the school was Charlotte R. Willard, a prominent missionary who was trained as a mathematics and astronomy teacher.
Sources mention the name of three teachers at the Martha King Memorial School, Arshelous der Kaloustian, Galene Philadelphevs, and a teacher of carpentry, Ohannes who was deported during the Armenian genocide at a date prior to July 24th 2015. The first student Theodorus was followed soon after by Pavlos and Sophia, both Greek, and the latter from a town on the Black Sea coast.
Three pupils of the Martha King Memorial School for the Deaf.
Image from The Anatolian (p. 96). Photo taken by Dildilian.
The Building of the Martha King Memorial School for the Deaf in Merzifon.
Image from The Anatolian (p.96). Photo taken by Dildilian.
The stories of these three children and of a later student, Kevork who was Armenian are reported in detail in the sources.
Method of teaching: A photograph shows eight children learning how to produce sounds. The method is reported to be based on the training of the deaf in America. The teacher Galene Philadelphevs, the daughter of a Greek pastor in Merzifon was sent to be trained in the Clarke School for the Deaf (specifically after Theodorus was brought to the mission by his mother Annitza), and the school was officially opened in 1910 after her return. Although some signing was used in the beginning between Philadelphevs and the three students, the training was centered around oralism, teaching children who already signed, to replace signing with speech and lip reading in the heritage (spoken) languages used at their homes (Armenian, Greek, or Turkish). Through training, the children could identify the strings on a guitar, eyes closed, by the vibration the strings made. They were taught how to read and write, sewing, weaving, carpentry, and housework. The donations to the school made it possible to admit nine students in 1912-1913. By 1915 there were 17 children, 14 Armenian and 3 Turkish.
Students of the Martha King Memorial School for the Deaf are learning to produce speech sounds. Image taken from Platt (1933, p. 60).
In October 1914, the school moved to its new premises in the Old Hospital building. Helen Keller was among the donators towards buying the furniture. There is mention of four deaf girls in the diary of another missionary, Bertha Morley. According to this diary, on August 2nd 1915 the Martha King Memorial School children were promised leave to remain, yet despite this promise they were barely spared deportation on two occasions (together with two servants and a few other staff), the first on August 10, 2015, the date when all 15 of the professors of the Anatolia College were deported, at least nine of them later known to be killed, and the second on August 12th 1915, when 55 girls together with servants and their families from the American Girls’ School were deported (48 of them later returning through the efforts of the director Charlotte R. Willard). The plans of the Turkish officials to move the children from the Martha King Memorial School to an orphanage partly succeeded: the deaf girls, together with the Armenian and Greek teachers were let to remain, but the boys were taken to the orphanage in the town. Several months later, the missionaries managed to move the boys back, this time to a building that belonged to the Protestant community. The school was kept open throughout World War I and up to 1920. After this date, the exchange of populations took place and very few Christians were left in Merzifon. Anatolia College and American Girls’ School, of which the Martha King Memorial School was an annex, were closed in 1921 by Turkish authorities. The American Girls’ School reopened in 1923 but closed permanently in 1924. Some of the teachers moved to the mission in Thessaloniki.
In short, the school was kept open for eleven years. It functioned during one of the most tumultuous and catastrophic times in Turkish history, the Balkan wars, World War I, the Armenian genocide, deportations, and the Turkish War of Independence, later leading to the exchange of populations, in which Christians were expunged from Anatolia (Asia Minor). The last mention of the Martha King School for the Deaf in the memoirs of Bertha Morley is 6 September 2015. The school was relocated after 1915 to a house where one of the floors was a French School in Merzifon and survived until the end of World War I.
In 1920, the Republic of Turkey was founded on the remains of the Ottoman Empire. The 1930s is marked by the rise of nationalism and the efforts to create a uniform and ideal Turkish citizen. The underlying factors in the policies concerning deaf (and other disabled) individuals were eugenic ideals, with disabled people being considered degenerates. Though, there was no eugenic policy per se, it was one of the prominent topics among the medical scientific community. It was in this climate that one of the most influential figures in deaf education, Süleyman Gök, took center stage, a pioneer in deaf education and in the rights of the Deaf. Gök, himself deaf since 6 years of age, was educated at the İstanbul School for the Mute and the Blind. He could both sign and speak. Gök, in his books, reconciles the discourse concerning 'the strong body' with his inclusive vision of the educational rights of the Deaf: “It is the community that is at fault, since deaf children are suitably intelligent for learning”. He gives examples of various ‘healthy’ Deaf families having healthy children and Deaf craftsmen, stating that Deaf people are valuable human resources for the economy and he further expresses that Deaf people can go into any profession including medicine, philosophy, and diplomacy. As another attempt to counter the eugenic climate, Gök, in his books, includes interviews with medical professionals who support his views.
Gök established in 1930 a deaf association which was annulled within a few years, and in 1944 another one. In the same year, he opened a school for the Deaf with 38 students. In one of his books, Dilsizliğin Telafisi: Sağır dilsizlerin tedris usulleri ve konuşma tarzları (Compensation of muteness: Instruction and communication methods for deaf-mutes) published in 1940, he introduces TİD as an excellent means for communication among the deaf. In this book there are, for the first time, photographs of signs and a sentence in TİD.
Year - Month. Image taken from Gök (1940, p. 13).
This book, together with the other two published in 1939 and 1958 (Dilsizliğin Telafisi: Türkiye’de ve Avrupa’da Dilsizler (Compensation of Muteness: Mutes in Turkey and Europe) and Dünyada ve Türkiye’de Sağır, Dilsiz Okulları Tarihçesi ve Eğitim Sistemi (The History of Deaf-Mute Schools in the World and in Turkey and the Education System) are the first books written by a deaf person about deafness and the Deaf.
The use of sign language was unofficially forbidden in Turkey in 1951, and Gök’s school was taken over by the state in 1953. According to the memories of elderly signers, Süleyman Gök was a fervent activist for sign language, yet his 1958 book reflects a change of heart. Here he does not talk about sign language but instead refers to ‘mimics and movements’ and advocates the replacement of sign language during instruction by lip-reading. One reason for this change of heart could be that he might not have wanted to undermine his own fund-raising activities by antagonizing sponsors in an oralist atmosphere. Because oralism had been getting increasingly popular since the 1880 Milan Conference and since Necati Kemal’s administration of the İzmir Institution for the Deaf-Mute and the Blind in the 1920s, oralism was regarded to be the only existing method of education in the 1950s, yet it is not clear whether teachers at the time totally gave up instruction and practice in signing.