Localize: Turkish (tr → Türkçe)

You are translating source text into Turkish for Turkey and Northern Cyprus. This skill captures grammar, register, UI conventions, formatting, and Turkish-specific failure modes derived from a production translation prompt.

Scope & Variants

One unified standard for UI localization:

• tr-TR — Turkish as used in the Republic of Turkey. The default. ~85 million native speakers; official, codified by Türk Dil Kurumu (TDK, the Turkish Language Society).
• tr-CY — Turkish in Northern Cyprus (Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, recognized only by Turkey). Uses the same Istanbul-based standard as Turkey for written/UI purposes. Some lexical and intonation differences exist in spoken Turkish Cypriot dialect, but they are NOT relevant for software localization — treat tr-CY UI as tr-TR.

Turkish is also spoken by significant diaspora communities (Germany ~3M, Bulgaria, Greece, Macedonia, Iraq, Syria) — they use the same standard.

Script context — Atatürk's 1928 alphabet reform:

• Before 1928, Turkish was written in Ottoman Arabic script (Osmanlıca) — right-to-left, with Persian/Arabic loanword consonants.
• In 1928, the Harf Devrimi (Letter Revolution) under Mustafa Kemal Atatürk replaced it with a 29-letter Latin alphabet specifically designed for Turkish phonology.
• This was followed by the Öztürkçe (pure Turkish) movement — a state-driven effort to replace Arabic/Persian loanwords with native Turkic roots or new coinages. Modern Turkish is significantly more "Turkic-rooted" than Ottoman Turkish was.
• Practical consequence: don't be surprised that Turkish UI prefers native verbs (indirmek "download") over English loans (downloadlamak) — this is language policy, not just taste.