COPENHAGEN, Denmark – In Keeping with an annual tradition, organizations in Turkey are marking a week-long “Kurdish Language Day” by calling for education in their own language in public schools, which is not legally possible.
“Children should receive education in their mother tongue. Language is the identity of a people,” Osman Ozcelik, spokesman of the umbrella organization Democratic Society Congress (DTK), told Firat News.
Speaking Kurdish and any expression of Kurdish culture was completely banned in Turkey until 1991.
According to Christian Sinclair, assistant director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Arizona University, Turkey viewed the Kurdish language as a threat to the territorial integrity of the state.
“Therefore, the Turkish language was used as a weapon against Kurds to assimilate the Kurds into the state ideology of a single Turkish national identity. The result of these decades-long policies is that many Kurds in Turkey can no longer call Kurdish their mother tongue,” he told Rudaw.
Among known Kurds who could not speak Kurdish were the internationally acclaimed film director Yilmaz Guney and protest singer Ahmet Kaya.
Mehmet Necef, associate professor at Southern University in Denmark, told Rudaw that the last few years there have been a number of improvements under the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).
In 2009, the Turkish government launched the Kurdish channel, TRT-6. Last month, it was announced that the first Kurdish-language university would open soon in Diyarbakir, where hospitals have begun to provide service in Kurdish.
In autumn 2013, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyib Erdogan launched the democracy package, which among other things gave the Kurds the right to Kurdish education in private schools, and to use the letters q, w and x, which do not exist in the Turkish alphabet, but do in Kurdish.
Most importantly, the AKP has reduced the once powerful military force, which was the most powerful opponent of changing the state founder Kemal Ataturk's principles about "one people, one flag, one language.” That had left no room for Kurdish.
“During governments before the AKP, it was unlikely that there would be any talk of giving any rights to the Kurds at all. AKP’s steps are not sufficient, but they are steps in the right direction,” Necef said.
Many Kurds in Turkey’s Kurdish southeast are more skeptical. In practice there is no change, more people told Rudaw.
Raci Bilici, chairman of the Human Rights Association’s office in Diyarbakir, said:
"Despite the democracy package, one can still not use the Kurdish letters in official contexts, and those who do so, risk being prosecuted."
"The authorities are not always allowing the relatives of prisoners to speak Kurdish with each other,” he added.
Baran Demir, a theater actor in the Kurdish group SI, said that his group is often rejected for performances at public cultural centers because they perform in Kurdish. In addition, the authorities refuse to print their material because it is written using the Kurdish letters q, w and x.
"Despite Erdogan's promises, we are still discriminated against as theatre people because we perform in Kurdish," Demir told Rudaw.
One artist, who fled Turkey during the ban on Kurdish, is considering returning. But singer Gani Nar still remains hesitant.
"There is a good development and TRT-6 is a development in relation to linguistic rights. But in the end it's just government propaganda and assimilation against the Kurds in Kurdish," Nar told Rudaw from exile in Germany.
Tahir Elci, president of the Diyarbakir Bar Association, recognizes that there is progress and considers TRT-6, Kurdish universities and other advancements as important steps, but stresses that it is not enough to solve the problem.
"AKP must take more steps to resolve this conflict. The solution is education in mother tongue in public schools," he said.
Necef agrees with Elci and explains that Kurdish language education requires a changing of the Turkish constitution, which only allows Turkish as the language of education.
But both Sinclair and Necef believe that Erdogan is trying to proceed carefully in order not to alienate the Turkish nationalists among his voters.
“Erdogan has to cultivate his base and ensure that he does not cross the voters’ lines. This is probably why he pulled back from the Kurdish Opening of 2009 and it subsequently failed,” Sinclair told Rudaw, referring to the 2009 initiative and promises to give Kurds more rights.
In summer 2009, the AKP allowed some militants of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (PKK) to return through the Habur gate on the border with Iraq. However, according to some, PKK supporters turned the guerillas’ return into a show of power, offending nationalist circles in Turkey. Erdogan is afraid of a second Habur, the experts believed.
But there are presidential elections in Turkey in August, where Erdogan needs Kurdish votes to win the presidency.
"That is why the prime minister has to give Kurds more rights in return," Necef said.
In addition, he believes that Kurdish in the future will get a legal status as a language because of the improved neighborly relations with the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, where Turkey has increasing trade and investments.
"In order to move closer to his Kurdish neighbors, Erdogan has to solve the problem of the Kurds in his own country first," Necef believes.
Kurdish Language Day is celebrated in Turkish Kurdistan on May 15, the day Kurdish linguist Celadet Bedirxan started to publish the Hawar journal in 1932, creating a Latin-based Kurdish alphabet.
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