Turkish is a language that has the potential to be a language of philosophy, but satisfactory philosophical works have not yet been written in Turkish. In this text, some of the historical conditions, structural problems and pedagogical indecisions that hinder the actualization of the potential of Turkish language are analyzed. It is referred that structural problems include openness to the influence of foreign words, subject-verb distinction in terms of syntax, the stabilizing effect of the “-dır” copula, the agglutinative structure of the verbs, and action-orientedness. While historical conditions allude to problems related to nomadic-sociology, linguistic differentiation of social classes, Islamization and Westernization; pedagogical indecisions refer to political orientations regarding the selection of sources, policies of teaching philosophy through translation, simplification of the language, Self-Turkishization, Arabicization, Englishization attemps and imperfect built-in typing habits. Conditions, problems and indecisions caused delay, division and fragmentation in the Turkish language, the progress towards perfection was interrupted, hence high literary and philosophical works could not be produced. Yunus Emre’s plain poems activated his own potential against this delay and fragmentation, and had the power to represent the competence of the Turkish language alone. Yunus’s poems contain many motifs, descriptions and elements that are highly open to philosophizing about Anatolian wisdom’s intricate nature design, mysticism, social values, ethics of co-existence, religiosity and humanity. Philosophers can philosophize the daily and professional life practices of literary works such as poetry and mythology, revive old words that give intuition and insight, and strengthen them by using new Turkish words more frequently.

Yunus Emre, Turkish Language, Philosophy, Translation, Philosophization