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Turkish literature is the literature written in the Turkish language, either in its Ottoman variety—which was heavily influenced by Persian and Arabic and used a variant of the Arabic script—or in its more normative variety, such as that spoken in the Republic of Turkey today. The history of Turkish literature spans a period of nearly 1,500 years. The oldest extant records of written Turkish are the Orhon inscriptions, found in the Orhon River valley in central Mongolia and dating to the 8th century CE. Beginning with the Seljuks in the 11th century CE, the Oghuz Turks began to settle in Anatolia, and in addition to the earlier oral traditions there arose a written literary tradition heavily influenced by Arabic and Persian literature. For the next 900 years, until shortly before the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1922, the oral and written traditions would remain largely separate from one another. With the founding of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, the two traditions came together for the first time. (continued...)
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