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Writing Systems Technical Resources

Unicode Status for Old Turkic

In The Unicode Standard, Old Turkic script implementation is discussed in Chapter 14 South and Central Asia-III — Ancient Scripts.

The Old Turkic script was encoded in The Unicode Standard version 5.2. The script is encoded in the following block. This character block contains the letters needed for writing in both the Orkhon and the Yenisei styles; where the letterforms vary between the two styles, each is encoded separately.

BlocksCharacter RangeAdded in Unicode VersionUnicode Chart
Old Turkic10C00..10C4F5.2U10C00.pdf

A number of proposals for its inclusion have been submitted to the Unicode Technical Committee and WG2:

  • 2006-08-14 Proposing to supplement with the speclal scrip and character for Uyghur Orkhun to ISO/IEC 10646 — China N.B. (WG2 N3164, L2/06-392)

  • 2007-02-01 Proposing to Supplement with the Special Scrip and Character for Uyghur Orkhun — China N.B. (WG2 N3258, L2/07-216)

  • 2007-09-19 Proposing to Supplement with the Special Scrip and Character for Uyghur Orkhun to ISO/IEC 10646 — China N.B. (WG2 N3299, L2/07-305)

  • 2008-01-25 Proposal for encoding the Old Turkic script in the SMP of the UCS — China, Ireland, the UK, and UC Berkeley Script Encoding Initiative (WG2 N3357, L2/07-325, L2/08-071)

  • 2012-11-03 Sorting all RTL scripts together — Roozbeh Pournader (L2/12-377)

  • 2019-02-17 Proposal to encode the Old Turkic ligature ORKHON CI — Anshuman Pandey (L2/19-069)

    • Recommendations to UTC #159 April-May 2019 on Script Proposals (L2/19-173) (See point 16.)

    • UTC #159 Minutes (L2/19-122) (See C.8 for decision and action items)

  • 2021-04-21 Application for Adding Letters to Old Turkish Alphabet — Gökbey Uluç (L2/21-081)

    • Recommendations to UTC #167 April 2021 on Script Proposals (L2/21-073) (See point 8.)

    • UTC #167 Minutes (L2/21-067) (See B.1 Action Item 167-A34 for decision and action items)

  • 2021-08-24 Proposal to revise the glyph of one Old Turkic character — Michael Everson, Andrew West (WG2 N5164, L2/21-153)

    • Recommendations to UTC #169 October 2021 on Script Proposals (L2/21-174) (See point 8.)

    • UTC #169 Minutes (L2/21-167) (See B.1 SECTION 8 for decision and action items)

  • 2022-04-14 Comments on Public Review Issues (Jan 18, 2022 - April 11, 2022) Regarding to “2021-04-21 Application for Adding Letters to Old Turkish Alphabet — Gökbey Uluç” — Tuğrul Çavdar (L2/22-063)

    • Recommendations to UTC #171 April 2022 on Script Proposals (L2/22-068) (See point 24.)

  • 2024-02-06 Proposal to Include Punctuation of Old Turkic — Yazga (L2/24-132)

    • Recommendations to UTC #180 (July 2024) on Script Proposals (L2/24-166) (See point B.28.)