Accounting Awakes in the Orient

Abstract

Turkey is a land of accounting experience. The Tanzimat and the alphabet reform shook up bookkeeping methods, and a relationship between the processing of debit and credit and writing orientation became apparent soon after. Until the alphabet reform, writing had proceeded from right to left. The Tanzimat created a first culture shock, when Turkish accountants had to integrate European accounting works produced in a right-to-left writing orientation culture. How was the conflict of orientation in order to position debit and credit to be resolved? Was the debit to be placed to the right and credit to the left, or the reverse? Once this antagonism was calmed, a second source of conflict appeared in 1928 with the alphabet reform. With writing orientation changing, were we once again to modify the position of debit and credit from what had been determined previously? From these goings-on, we learn much about the proper European origin of the position of debit and credit, and by the same hypothesis, about the origin of modern accounting.

Keywords

• Débit, credit, dextroverse, sinistroverse, semitic writing, Ilkhanids