The Turkish Ezan and State Language Reform The 1932 change of the Islamic call to prayer (ezan in Turkish) from classical Arabic to modern Turkish has been explored in a number of ways. It has been framed as a part of the early Turkish secularization reforms, a step toward modernization, or a personal project of Atatürk. While this reform is certainly an aspect of all these, the ezan change has yet to be approached within the context of the Turkish language reform (this reform introduced Romanized characters as well as grammatical and syntactical shifts to the existing Ottoman language). In this paper, through the lens of language reform, I highlight, as of yet, unexplored societal alterations and civic religious reorientation assisted by the Turkish ezan. Of these societal alterations, the Turkish ezan contributed to successful adoption of modern Turkish, solidification and dissemination of Turkish nationalism, and creation of a new Turkish ethnicity. In the religious realm, the ezan change participated in untangling religion from the state apparatus and assisted in creation of the civic version of Islam seen in Turkey today. Moreover, this paper fleshes out instances of linguistic conflict between competing narratives, nascent views of Turkishness, and the practical problems involved with language reform and populace adoption. This paper draws upon original Turkish newspapers and commentaries as well as secondary sources to open new optics on this pivotal point in national solidification. These sources present a local perspective on the Turkish ezan and marks ways this view changed from its beginning in 1932 till the ezan's shift back to classical Arabic in 1950. Beyond highlighting accounts of the ezan change in Turkey, this paper builds a framework to better understand the success of the Turkish language reform. More broadly, it begins to sketch a methodological outline of nationalist language reforms in general and the role religion and the civil society play in a language reform’s overall success or failure.