Prayer Call in Turkish

Interesting factoid of the day, hopefully accurate.  Yesterday I was hanging out at the village cafe with some small town Marxists, and they told me that the (Arabic) prayer call was in Turkish in Turkey from ca. 1932 to ca. 1949.  [Actually, it was 1950, after Adnan Menderes became PM — he had campaigned on precisely that platform]. I had heard this story before, but had thought that it had lasted only a few weeks or months before Atatürk had to cave in to popular pressure to relent. Rather, he instituted the Turkish prayer call at the height of the dictator period (as Erik Zurcher characterized, ca. 1932-1934 perhaps), and it lasted over a decade beyond his 1938 death. Neat, I had no idea.

Better yet, when the village Marxists recited the prayer call, I was blown away to see that it wasn’t a literal translation of the original at all. Supposedly, in order to make the call fit the same melody, they had to change the translation some — but I’m not so sure.

Here’s the prayer call, with an English translation of the Turkish:

1) Tanrı uludur! Tanrı uludur! Tanrı uludur! Tanrı uludur!

[“God is great!…”] [NB: The original Arabic “Allahu Akbar” has a superlative/comparative aspect to it that the Turkish version doesn’t — God is Greater/Greatest]

2) Yoktur ondan başka tapılacak

[“It is attested to that there is no other”] [The Arabic literal translation: “I bear witness that there is no God but God” — note the passive aspect of the witnessing in Turkish]

3) Muhammad onun kulu ve rasuludur

[“Muhammad is His servant and messenger”][Arabic literal translation “Muhammad is His messenger.” They added the servant bit]

4) Haydi namaza, haydi namaza.

[“Let’s go to prayer…”] [NB: This seems an accurate rendition]

5) Haydi fallaha, haydi fallaha.

[“Let’s go to prosperity…”] [NB: This seems accurate as well]

6) Tanrı uludur! Tanrı uludur! Tanrı uludur! Tanrı uludur!

“God is Great…”

For those who aren’t aware, the Muslim prayer call is always in Arabic, without exception. Putting it in Turkish for 17-18 years was as revolutionary in Turkey as Vatican II’s changing the Latin mass to vernacular languages in the early 1960s…

Update:

According to this link of the Turkish prayer call, the villagers don’t quite remember the call as it seems to have actually been (and, no, I’m not going to try and transcribe the real prayer call, but go ahead and correct it in the comments if you’re up to it).