This article examines the historical and contemporary debates surrounding the creation of a common Latin-based alphabet for the Turkic world, taking the First Turkological Congress in Baku (1926) and the 2024 meetings of the Turkic World Common Alphabet Commission as two key milestones in a century-long process. It first revisits Umar Aliyev’s eight principles for a unified Latin alphabet—centered on one-to-one phoneme–grapheme correspondence, Latin-based symbols, minimal use of diacritics, and the avoidance of digraphs and foreign letters—and argues that these criteria remain strikingly relevant for present-day alphabet reform efforts in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and other Turkic republics. The article then analyzes the ambivalent position of Fuat Köprülü, whose diplomatic stance in Baku contrasts with his early public criticism, and later acceptance, of the Latin alphabet in Turkey, thereby illustrating the tension between ideological reservations and pragmatic cultural policy.

In the contemporary context, the study evaluates the phonological, political and sociocultural dimensions of the 34-letter Common Turkic Latin Alphabet proposed in 2024, which seeks to accommodate the sound systems of diverse Turkic languages while maintaining compatibility with the Turkish and Azerbaijani alphabets. By classifying current Turkic communities according to their use of Latin, Cyrillic and Arabic scripts, the article demonstrates how script plurality complicates linguistic unity and cultural integration. It concludes that the adoption of a shared Latin-based alphabet—rather than the specific graphic form itself—is a crucial precondition for strengthening linguistic cohesion, educational cooperation and cultural connectivity across the Turkic world.