The development of the Turkish alphabet was mostly the initiative of Kemal Atatürk after the formation of the Republic of Turkey, and it was part of a wide-sweeping series of reforms focused on separating the new nation from its Ottoman past, enforcing secularization, and solidifying a nationalist identity on par with developed European nations. He wasn't the first to raise the idea, but he was the one to end up enthusiastically enacting the change. This was strongly opposed by conservatives and religious factions, which (accurately) saw it as separating Turkey from the Arab world.

Beginning in 1928, the Turkish alphabet was used for all public writing and taught instead of the Ottoman Turkish alphabet- by 1929, it was completely compulsory. One benefit: this simplified alphabet, along with very aggressive educational programs, ended up greatly raising the literacy rate in Turkey. The Latin-based alphabet was much, much easier to learn.

The Hawar alphabet for Kurmanji Kurdish was introduced by Kurdish nationalists a few years later for similar reasons, but on a much smaller scale. It didn't gain as much wide-spread acceptance, and there's still dialects of Kurdish that are exclusively written in Perso-Arabic script.