So, I know that the Ottoman Turkish script was not strictly Arabic script, as it had slightly different pronunciation and modified letters to make sounds that do not appear in Arabic. Also, I know that the new (modified) Latin script was introduced by Ataturk to bring about change and to 'refresh' Turkey after their loss in WW1. My question is, why was this necessary? Is there something about the Latin script that makes it an inherently better match to the Turkish language? Couldn't they have focused their efforts elsewhere? Had there been some sort of historic sentiment that the alphabet was insufficient? Wouldn't completely revamping an entire writing system create all sorts of headaches regarding schooling, signage, documents, etc, and annoy people who have been reading and writing using the old system for their entire lives? If I think of, say, the UK, I'd imagine that a lot of people wouldn't take kindly to being forced to use the Greek alphabet and completely remove all elements of the Latin alphabet from their lives. What made it work so well for Turkey?
The main reason for the shift is the attempt to break with the Ottoman past after the foundation of the new Turkish republic in 1923. The Arabic script is the script of Islam and the Arab world. The Latin script is the script of Europe and the West. By switching to Latin, the new Turkish government made their choice to place their country in the Western world. The second reason, as important as the first, has to do with Turkish nationalism. The Arabic script was fitting for Arabic, but by commissioning a new Latin script for Turkish, Ataturk attempted to create more pride in Turkishness and Turkish itself. The language would have its own script. The switch happened in 1928
It is true that everything had to be revamped and people got cut off from their heritage, but this was precisely the goal. It was meant to push Turkey by force into the Western(or as it was seen 'modern') world. By going through all the effort of switching script, the society would go through the effort of modernizing.
It worked well for Turkey, because it was enforces by an authoritarian regime on a society that was undergoing huge changes in a country that came into being out of the ashes of the old Ottoman empire. If the UK would switch now, the difference would be the kind of government that would try to affect the change, but more importantly, the UK would not be going through the huge changes that the formerly Ottoman Empire and now Turkish Republic was going. Both the Turkish state was new and the Turkish people themselves were coming from a multi-ethnic empire and had to define their culture in a new national state.
Agree with NoubreektmijnKlomp on the assessment, and also want to point out an important fact: Turkey's literacy rate in the 1920's was less than 10%.
This period was before the advent of universal schooling, so a change to the way a language was written mainly impacted the educated populace in cities, who were already familiar with the latin script, and businesses. Trying to this in a modern, fully literate country (like the UK) would be very difficult.
To comment on this:
I know that the Ottoman Turkish script was not strictly Arabic script, as it had slightly different pronunciation and modified letters to make sounds that do not appear in Arabic.
So technically Ottoman Turkish used the Perso-Arabic script, as those modifications that were used for Persian were then adapted for Turkish (and other Turkic languages such as Chaghtai) as the various Turkic empires began their process of Persianization. These modifications most prominently consists of the addition of 4 letters: پ چ ژ گ , representing English from right to left [p], [ch], [zh] (like the sound in 'measure'), and [g]. These phonemes are not found in standard Arabic and thus needed to be addded to accomodate to the phonemes of Persian, which has very similar phonemes to Turkish--despite not being in the same language families (indo-european vs. altaic).