Does it distinguish dotted İ/i from dotless I/ı?

Yes. These are treated as two separate letter pairs, and casing follows Turkish conventions rather than the English rule that folds I to i.

Are ğ, ş and ç treated as separate letters?

Yes. They are transcribed as the distinct letters they are, never stripped down to g, s or c the way accents might be removed in another language.

Can it read pre-1928 Ottoman Turkish material?

Ottoman Turkish, written in Arabic script before the 1928 reform, is a different writing system with its own page; this page covers modern Republican Turkish in the Latin alphabet.

Can it read a legal or regulatory document with amendment citations?

Yes. Numbered Madde articles and their parenthetical Official Gazette citations are transcribed together, so a reader can see exactly which clause a cited amendment changed.

Can it read an old newspaper photograph or microfilm, like a 1920s issue?

Yes. Faded, foxed or tightly columned period print is read on its own terms; because it is already in the modern alphabet, the main obstacles are print quality rather than letterforms.

Turkish

Modern Turkish print, documents and signs turned into text

Turkey’s 1928 alphabet law replaced Ottoman Arabic script with a Latin one almost overnight, and the letters that new alphabet added still trip up software built for other Latin-script languages: a dotted İ and a dotless I are different letters with different lower-case forms, and ğ, ş and ç are letters in their own right rather than accented versions of g, s and c. Evidano reads modern Turkish print, official documents and signage, and sets the transcription beside the image so every one of those letters can be checked. Material written before the reform, in Ottoman Arabic script, has its own page.

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Sample pages

Grainy newspaper photograph of a classroom with new Latin letters chalked on a blackboard and a teacher standing beside a pupil at the board, with a caption printed below — Sample 1. A news photograph from Milliyet, 2 January 1929, showing a Millet Mektebi, or Nation’s School, class in the Galatasaray district of Istanbul barely two months after the alphabet law. The new Latin letters are chalked on the blackboard behind the teacher, and the caption beneath, itself printed in the new alphabet, reports that a woman pupil passed the writing exercise the teacher had set.

Dense multi-column Turkish newspaper front page under a large decorative masthead reading Milliyet, with a bold headline announcing poor relief payments — Sample 2. The front page of Milliyet for 7 February 1929, held by Istanbul University Library, its lead headline announcing the start of poor-relief payments. Dense multi-column Latin-script Turkish fills the page beneath a large decorative masthead, with the dotted capital İ appearing repeatedly in headlines and body text.

Clean typeset regulation document with a bold title, numbered sections and numbered Madde articles, a parenthetical amendment citation opening several of the lettered definitions — Sample 3. The opening page of the Ministry of National Education’s Secondary Education Institutions Regulation, first published in 2013 and kept as a consolidated text on the Turkish Presidency’s official legislation database. Numbered Madde articles set out the regulation’s scope and definitions, several of them prefaced by a parenthetical note citing the Official Gazette date and issue where that clause was later amended, the latest of those notes dated September 2020.

Red municipal street-name sign reading Erbakan Meydanı, Hacıbayram Mahallesi - Altındağ, mounted on a pole beneath a second street sign — Sample 4. A red municipal street-name sign for Erbakan Meydanı in the Hacıbayram neighbourhood of Altındağ, Ankara, mounted below a second sign for an adjoining street. Three of the capitalised words — MEYDANI, HACIBAYRAM and ALTINDAĞ — use Turkish’s dotless ı where English would put an i, while MAHALLESİ between them carries the dotted capital İ, and Altındağ ends in the soft ğ that lengthens the vowel before it rather than being pronounced as a consonant of its own.

Fully justified page of dense 1930s Turkish print, numbered 22, ending in a lettered list of laws from A to D — Sample 5. Page 22 of the Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi’s On Beşinci Yıl Kitabı (Republican People’s Party Fifteenth Anniversary Book), Ankara, 1938, from a chapter on the reorganisation of Turkish justice since the Republic’s founding. The page recounts the 1934 Judges Law and a 30 May 1938 law expanding the promotion quotas open to judges, then opens a lettered list of the earlier laws, from 1921 to 1923, that had built up the modern court system.

What modern Turkish text looks like on the page

The Turkish Grand National Assembly adopted the new Latin alphabet on 1 November 1928, and within weeks the Millet Mektepleri, or Nation’s Schools, campaign was teaching the new letters to adults across the country in evening classes held in ordinary schoolrooms. Newspapers switched over almost as fast as the law itself, so a Turkish paper from December 1928 already looks like a modern one rather than like the Ottoman press that had run every day before it.

The alphabet the reform settled on has twenty-nine letters and no native q, w or x. Four of those letters are easy to confuse if you are not expecting them: İ and i are the dotted capital and lower-case pair, while I and ı are a completely separate dotless pair, so capitalising ı does not produce an I with no relation to dotting rules from English. Ç, ğ and ş are likewise independent letters rather than accented forms of c, g and s: ç and ş mark distinct consonant sounds, and ğ, the yumuşak ge or soft g, is silent or lengthens the vowel before it and never opens a word.

Everyday modern documents build their own conventions on top of that alphabet. Turkish laws and regulations are organised into numbered maddeler, or articles, and a clause that has been revised since first publication carries a parenthetical note citing the Official Gazette date and number where the amendment appeared. Newspapers, forms and street signs use the same standard orthography, though older newsprint adds the usual problems of period print: dense multi-column layouts, decorative masthead type, and the fading and foxing of seventy- or eighty-year-old paper.

Why ordinary OCR struggles here

Four letters where English keeps two

İ/i and I/ı are two independent letter pairs, not one pair with an optional dot. Software that case-folds Turkish text using English rules turns İstanbul into istanbul with the dot in the wrong place, or reads ısı, meaning temperature, as if it began with the letter i.

Ğ, ş and ç are not accented letters

A system built to strip diacritics the way it might for French or Spanish deletes information Turkish needs: ş and s, ç and c, ğ and g are different letters standing for different sounds, and collapsing them changes both the spelling and the meaning of a word.

An article-and-amendment apparatus in legal text

Turkish regulations number their articles as Madde 1, Madde 2 and so on, and a revised clause carries a parenthetical citation to the Official Gazette date and issue where the change was published. That apparatus has to stay attached to the exact clause it modifies rather than drifting into the surrounding prose.

Old newsprint, not old letterforms

A 1920s or 1930s Turkish newspaper is already in the modern alphabet, so none of the letterform confusion of Ottoman material applies, but tight multi-column layouts, decorative headline type and decades of fading and foxing still make period print harder to read than a current page.

Who works with this material

Legal and regulatory researchers

Turkish law is organised into numbered Madde articles with amendment histories cited inline, and getting those citations attached to the right clause is essential for legal research and compliance work.

Press historians of the early Republic

Newspapers from the months and years after 1928 document how quickly the new alphabet took hold and are a primary source for the Millet Mektepleri literacy campaign itself, provided the period print can be read reliably.

Translators and localisation teams

Correctly distinguishing İ, i, I and ı, and preserving ğ, ş and ç rather than stripping them, is basic to producing usable Turkish text from any source, since a dropped dot or a flattened letter silently changes a word.

Municipal and government-records staff

Street signs, permits and public notices need consistent transcription for address databases and public information systems, including the place names where ğ and ş are most common.

Getting the best transcription

Step 1

Say which pair of i’s you need

Tell the model that İ/i and I/ı are four distinct letters and ask for casing to follow Turkish rules, not the English convention of folding I to i.

Step 2

Ask for ğ, ş and ç to be kept as their own letters

Specify that these should never be stripped down to g, s and c, since doing so changes both the spelling and the sound of the word.

Step 3

Preserve the article-and-amendment apparatus

On a law or regulation, ask for each Madde number and any parenthetical Official Gazette citation to stay attached to the exact clause it modifies, rather than drifting into the surrounding text.

Step 4

Test on the densest or oldest sample first

Run a multi-column 1920s or 1930s newspaper page, or a heavily amended regulation, before the rest of a batch. If those come through cleanly, plainer modern material needs only a light check.

Frequently asked questions

Does it distinguish dotted İ/i from dotless I/ı?: Yes. These are treated as two separate letter pairs, and casing follows Turkish conventions rather than the English rule that folds I to i.
Are ğ, ş and ç treated as separate letters?: Yes. They are transcribed as the distinct letters they are, never stripped down to g, s or c the way accents might be removed in another language.
Can it read pre-1928 Ottoman Turkish material?: Ottoman Turkish, written in Arabic script before the 1928 reform, is a different writing system with its own page; this page covers modern Republican Turkish in the Latin alphabet.
Can it read a legal or regulatory document with amendment citations?: Yes. Numbered Madde articles and their parenthetical Official Gazette citations are transcribed together, so a reader can see exactly which clause a cited amendment changed.
Can it read an old newspaper photograph or microfilm, like a 1920s issue?: Yes. Faded, foxed or tightly columned period print is read on its own terms; because it is already in the modern alphabet, the main obstacles are print quality rather than letterforms.

Related scripts and pages

Ottoman Turkish image to textThe Arabic-script Turkish of before 1928, on its own page rather than mixed into modern Republican material.Azerbaijani image to textA closely related Turkic language with the same dotted-and-dotless i problem in its own Latin alphabet.Albanian image to textAnother twentieth-century alphabet standardisation, solved with digraphs rather than a wholesale script change.Image to TextSearch all supported languages, scripts and document types.

Transcribe your Turkish documents

Upload a document, a printed page or a sign, and check the modern Turkish transcription line by line before you export it.

Modern Turkish print, documents and signs turned into text

Sample pages

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What modern Turkish text looks like on the page

Why ordinary OCR struggles here

Four letters where English keeps two

Ğ, ş and ç are not accented letters

An article-and-amendment apparatus in legal text

Old newsprint, not old letterforms

Who works with this material

Legal and regulatory researchers

Press historians of the early Republic

Translators and localisation teams

Municipal and government-records staff

Getting the best transcription

Say which pair of i’s you need

Ask for ğ, ş and ç to be kept as their own letters

Preserve the article-and-amendment apparatus

Test on the densest or oldest sample first

Frequently asked questions

Related scripts and pages

Transcribe your Turkish documents

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