[teamonkey]

> That's like saying it'd be hard to imagine being able to buy alcohol due to prohibition.

That really is quite a stretch. I'm imagining the absurdity of internet cafes all over Istanbul hiding their bootleg keyboards during a bust.

It's entirely anecdotal but I have Turkish relatives on one side of my family. They were allowed - encouraged - to learn English and French growing up, so the letters themselves certainly weren't illegal. There was no ban on newspapers or books written in other languages. However Turkish was the only officially recognized language in Turkey and Turkish, literally by definition, does not have those letters.