ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Kurds in Turkey have accused the country’s ruling Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) mayors of removing Kurdish text from signage in the Kurdish provinces this week. The AKP has denied the allegations.
The alleged removal of Kurdish text comes in spite of AKP efforts to gain Kurdish support for Istanbul’s local election rerun later this month.
Up until last week, a sign on the front of a building in Tatvan read “Tatvan Municipality” in both Turkish and Kurdish. However, the Kurdish signage was removed and replaced with an exclusively Turkish “Municipal Police Directorate” sign earlier this week.
There have also been claims that the Kurdish text on the sign for the city’s main cemetery has been removed.
Bitlis Name, a Twitter account covering events in Bitlis province, southeastern Turkey, called on AKP spokesperson Omer Celik to clarify the party's stance on the use of Kurdish.
Sn @omerrcelik bir haftadır Bitlis Belediyesi başta olmak üzere Tatvan ilçe Belediyesi ve partinizin kazandığı diğer Belediyeler de Kürtçe tabelalar indiliyor. Son olarak Tatvan Belediyesi mezarlıkta yer alan tabelayı “dahi” indirdi.
— Bitlis Name (@BitlisName) June 7, 2019
Partiniz Kürtçe’ye karşı savaş mı açtı? pic.twitter.com/pNWcAMYDrX
The tweet was accompanied by photos showing the Bitlis cemetery signage before and after the removal of the Kurdish text.
Rudaw English reached out to the Tatvan mayor’s office early on Saturday, but they refused to “answer questions coming from outside Turkey”.
Previously, there were reports that the signage welcoming people as they enter Bitlis was removed, infuriating the province's Kurdish inhabitants.
However, the mayor’s office confirmed the signs' removal in a statement, attributing it to damage caused by snow plows. The signs would be re-installed in the same languages of Turkish, Kurdish, and English, the statement added.
The allegations of Kurdish signage removal come in spite of AKP efforts to gain Kurdish votes for the upcoming Istanbul municipal election rerun on June 23.
In the original run of the mayoral election in March, Binali Yildirim, the AKP’s candidate for Istanbul mayor, narrowly lost out to the Republican People’s Party (CHP)'s Ekrem İmamoğlu. The AKP now hopes to win over the million pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) voters in Istanbul in order to secure victory.
Yildirim visited the Kurdish city of Diyarbakir on Thursday to galvanize Kurdish support for the party.
Speaking to Rudaw during Yildirim’s visit to Diyarbakir, the city's AKP head said he disagreed with the removal of Kurdish signage.
“We have never had any issues with Kurdish or Kurds. Actually, I have not inspected the removal of signage in Bitlis but we surely do not have any allergy against the billboards,” said Suleyman Serdar Budak.
The Kurdish language has also been used as a political pawn by the CHP, with its leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu calling for the recognition of the Kurdish language in civic institutions and education.
Restrictions on education in Kurdish have been relaxed, however, with some higher education institutions offering Kurdish language courses, while some schools offer optional Kurdish language classes where demand is deemed to be high enough.
