Some words used in Ottoman Turkish are still actively used in the Azerbaijani language, but this is still not enough for an Azerbaijani to understand Ottoman Turkish.
Dear friend, you're misunderstanding a couple of things.
- Today Turkish is not artificial, it's common language that is shaped during centuries of Anatolian Turkish oghuz dialect. so if we have one Azerbaijani north , south and Turkish traveled in 17 th century Anatolia, almost all of them had very high mutual intelligibly with common Anatolian Turkish language.
But why people claim ottoman era language is different ? Well in Middle Ages High state language by nations were different mostly because of religious and other reasons. For example, many westerner used Latin as high state language or Safavid use very High Farsi that was not understandable by common tongue. Without proper education to understand. just like ottoman. Ottoman made a High state language by 3 languages, which is unique and very impressive achievement. They used this language in High State area to show their power and other reason.
When we speak about ottoman era Turkish,
- high state language (gov other areas)
- Common Turkish (locals)
- Language and between. (some ink slikkers, newspapars or elite people)
During Republic time, Ottoman common language was adapted as official and had the couple of tweaks, nothing more. The between common en high state is adapted by Government & law and other areas. Person who study law in Türkiye like many countries learn heavy old words and different common words.
What most impressive is that if we open 13th century Yunus emre which is Old anatolian Turkish and latinize the alphabet. The amount of Turkish understandability is very high.
But a British person who reads William
Shakespeare original text would have problem with it. without proper training, a British can no understand 500 years old original Shakespeare. or Japanese can no read old japonica. Even Chinese can not read old Chinese without proper training . Those are facts.
Another misconceptions is that Ataturk didn't latinize the alphabet alone. It was a series of effects that is not mentioned. When Russian Empire absorbed many Turkic dynasties in the region. Many Turkics did face new terms, the term Turk switches to Turkic. Yes! The Term Turkic invented mid 19th century (see oxford etymology). From this point many Turkic scholars in Russian Empire thought it would very be important to preserve Turkic language to do that they switched to latin. Oldest probably the Yakut Turkic 1909 they followed by tatars bashkirs and others.
But a major milestone to latinize was made during 1926 Baku Turkology Congress. Where majority scholars agreed on switching Latin. This was also positively welcomed in Türkiye, this lead to in 1928 Türkiye switched Latin. the idea was simple, with latin they could preserve language but also easily unified Turkics language and created a unique bridge between Turkic and Türkiye.
This was seen by Stalin. From his reign, they forced everyone to create a singular nation and mandating Cyrilics to ensure not division. Those who opposed faced brutal dictatorial ships with qulaks or face to migrations. Stalin also Created Azeri thesis to ensure Azerbaijani would become different from Türkiye. He also removed Azerbaijani Turks in some region and created Zengizor corridor to stop Türkiye influence the region or the Turkic to unite under single banner.
What interesting is that . During this event, Iran faced a very od turn. Some Turkish - iranian created Pan-iranism . For example, Mahmud Afshar ethnically Turkish who created first Pan-iranism movement against pan-turkism. in his ideology, Azerbaijani Turks should be defender or Pan-iranian because of their heritage. And created large support even in none turkish society that iran still uses. Today iran uses this as Azeri propaganda. for example, one of head members always label : azerbaycan turks as "iranian without Iran passport "