Silencing of the Kurdish language in modern Turkey: who is to blame?

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Kurds make up around a fifth of Turkey’s population, but few are able to speak their mother tongue. Turkish is the country’s only constitutionally recognised language. It is the language of employment, education, any public institution. By contrast, the Kurdish language has suffered from waves of criminalisation in Turkey, with restrictions on its use relaxed for political leverage. Turkey’s ruling and opposition parties pass back-and-forth blame for scarce use of Kurdish, particularly among young Kurds.

Rawest, a Kurdish research center in Diyarbakir, conducted a survey in several Kurdish areas of southeastern Turkey in September 2019, to scope out the extent of Kurdish proficiency among the country’s 18-30 year olds. Of the 600 young Kurds surveyed, only 18 percent said they could speak, read and write Kurdish. Less than half of respondents, 44 percent, said they were able to speak their mother tongue. When asked what the official language of Turkey should be, 71.5 percent of participants said it should be both Turkish and Kurdish. 


Rejection and rebellion

More than a century ago, Kurds enjoyed limited freedom to practice their language under the rule of Ottoman Empire. Kurdish-language newspapers were allowed to be published, and its maps would mark Kurdistan, the land of the Kurds. When the empire was on the brink of collapse after World War I, Turkish nationalist Mustafa Kemal Ataturk revolted with the backing of some Kurds, who he sought to absorb into the Turkish national fold. 

“Our existence requires that Kurds, Turks and all Muslim elements should work together to defend our independence and prevent the partition of the fatherland,” Ataturk said in a speech in Diyarbakir, unofficial capital of Kurdish areas in Turkey in 1919. 

However, when Ataturk established modern Turkey in 1923, he denied the existence of Kurds or their language. Instead, he said that Kurds – the largest ethnic minority in the country – were simply “mountain Turks.” Kurds were disproportionately jailed, and even massacred.
 
Soon after the establishment of modern Turkey, Kurds began revolting against the oppressive state. Kurdish leader Sheikh Said led a rebellion against Ataturk’s government in February 1925, in the Diyarbakir and Elazig provinces in the east of the country.

Ataturk deployed tens of thousands of troops to the two provinces and ended the rebellion two months later, after capturing and executing Sheikh Said and his comrades. 

This was not the last of Kurdish rebellion. More than a decade later, Seyit Riza rose up against the Turkish state – but the rebellion was suppressed and up to 45,000 Kurds were massacred.

Demand for the recognition and teaching of the Kurdish language were among the main factors behind both rebellions. 

Displacement and assimilation

Seeing Kurdish uprisings as a serious threat, Ataturk and his successors cracked down on the already limited number of Kurdish institutions, and worked to assimilate Kurds by providing Turkish education to remote Kurdish areas.

Turkey’s National Assembly, or parliament, passed the Resettlement Law in 1934 to legitimise the forced displacement of Kurds and other minorities to Turkish areas in an attempt at forced assimilation. Sukru Kaya, interior minister at the time, said the law “will create a country where only one language is spoken, and everyone will think the same way and share the same sentiment.”

Ismet Inonu, then prime minister, said in a 1935 report that he backed assimilation through forced displacement of Kurds to reduce their population in southeastern provinces – to make “Kurds become familiar with Turkish identity, and become loyal to the state.” Focus for this attempt at forced assimilation of Kurds had mainly been on poorer people in rural areas. 

In 1961, the Turkish government established special state-funded boarding schools to remove Kurdish children from their homes and provide them with an entirely Turkish education. The schools proved to backfire in some cases, as granting children literacy in Turkish meant new-found access to literature beyond what was available on the curriculum, including on socialism and liberation politics – unintentionally helping students to establish a Kurdish identity. 

One young Kurd who attended such a school was Abdullah Ocalan. He entered its system without a strong sense of Kurdish identity, but left emboldened. Ocalan would go on to found the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in 1978, a militant group that has demanded Kurdish rights ever since its foundation. 

PKK and the Kurdish language 

Turkey’s current constitution, ratified after the 1980 military coup, stipulates that the country’s only official language is Turkish. It does not entirely prohibit use of Kurdish, but successive Turkish governments would crack down on its use. 

The PKK’s first military action against the Turkish state in 1984 was a warning that Kurds could once more launch a rebellion, and demonstrated the government’s failure to silence Kurds through its assimilation policy. The PKK’s early years were dominated by armed struggle, but they demanded the right for Kurds to speak their mother tongue without fear of persecution.

Ocalan’s books were written in Turkish, and the language served as the main means of communication between PKK commanders. Those who joined the group would be trained in Turkish, the language of available materials at the time, a former PKK fighter of two decades told Rudaw English on the condition of anonymity. But over the course of the 1990s and 2000s, the group would increasingly provide Kurdish-language training too, and give new recruits the option to undertake their training in either language. 

The PKK established the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK) in 2007, founding a Kurdish language center which soon became a target of the state. In response, Turkish prosecutors launched a campaign dubbed the KCK Case, arresting and otherwise reprimanding anyone believed to be affiliated with the group. The case remains active; the Turkish parliament membership of two Kurdish parliamentarians was revoked as recently as June 2020.

A short-lived opening 

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power in 2002, and toyed with increasing Kurdish cultural and linguistic freedoms ruled out by previous cabinets. The newly-established party was after the votes of the country’s millions of Kurds, and succeeded in appealing to more socially and politically conservative Kurds. It managed to rival Kurdish parties – former versions of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), and now the HDP itself – for the majority stake in the Kurdish voter base. 

With the HDP’s mediation, the AKP government and the PKK reached a ceasefire agreement in 2013, which was coupled with the granting of concessions towards Kurdish language and culture. The AKP’s government allowed Kurds to open Kurdish language institutions, media outlets including 24-hour TV channels, and allowed the HDP to open state-funded kindergartens that taught in Kurdish, known as Zarokistans. For the first time in Turkish history, Kurds were allowed to defend themselves in Kurdish in court – albeit in what was registered as an “unknown language.”

In return, the government sought the withdrawal of PKK fighters from southeast Turkey to the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. The PKK withdrew some of its fighters, and ceased its attacks on Turkish forces and institutions.  But the fragile peace process ended in 2015. Both sides blamed the other for failure to adhere to the deal. Turkey claimed that the PKK was unwilling to withdraw enough of its forces, while the PKK claimed that Turkey was insincere and opportunistic in its opening up to Kurdish demands. 

Some PKK-affiliated militants dug trenches and seized control of Kurdish areas. The government retaliated with extensive attacks on the militants, driving them out. It also began reversing advances made for use of the Kurdish language.

Kurdish language institutions were further targeted after the failed coup of July 2016 – blamed on Fethullah Gulen, a former ally of Erdogan. Kurdish parties repeatedly and explicitly denied their involvement in the coup attempt, but were nevertheless among the wide spectrum of opposition groups targeted by Erdogan’s government.
 
Zarokistans opened by HDP mayors just a few hopeful years earlier, where cohorts of Kurdish children received education in their mother tongue, were shut down by Ankara in 2017.

Blame game

The HDP has the largest national share of Kurdish votes, but sees itself as leftist and pro-Kurd, rather than essentially Kurdish. It claims the AKP government is for the most part to be blamed for recent marginalization of the Kurdish language. 

Three HDP parliamentarians submitted a request to the Turkish education ministry on May 12, asking for an officially recognised day on which the Kurdish language can be celebrated annually. The request was declined, on the grounds that it would violate the constitution’s exclusive recognition of Turkish as the country’s official language.

Dersim Dag, one of the three parliamentarians who submitted the request, told Rudaw English that to act on what is constitutionally permitted alone would mean to “not demand anything related to Kurds and their culture.”

“The Kurdish language faces mounting pressure and oppression … so all Kurds have to protect their language. In this regard, Kurdish political parties and institutions including the HDP have shortcomings, but we still struggle to protect our language,” Dag told Rudaw English.

Dag said that her party has taken “valuable” steps to serve the Kurdish language, including provision of Kurdish courses, its opening of the now shut down Zarokistans, and participation in institutions in the country that aim to promote the Kurdish language. 

Some HDP mayors have posted Kurdish-language signs on government offices upon their appointment, but when mayors were removed from their offices, so too were the signs. One state-appointed AKP trustee even demolished a Kurdish library.

Rizgin Birlik is Kurdish parliamentarian in the southeastern province of Sirnak, on the ticket of the AKP. He told Rudaw English that his party has paved the way for Kurds to speak their language, but some choose not to do so.

“Since the AKP took power, the ban on the Kurdish language and names for people and villages has been removed. Now, Kurds can speak their language everywhere freely,” Birlik said in Kurdish. He added that Kurds in Turkey enjoy “democracy” while they are suppressed in other countries. 

AKP government measures to open up Kurdish language engagement have broadly been met with disinterest, Birlik said.
 
“Kurdish is taught as an optional lesson in our schools. The families are free to choose whether to send their children to Kurdish lessons or not. But no one is interested in attending Kurdish lessons because it is not so useful in Turkey or globally.”

The HDP rarely issues statements in Kurdish, and their officials usually speak in Turkish – putting it in no right position to criticise the AKP, Birlik said. 

“They don’t follow Kurdish norms and culture at all … However, we as the AKP focus on Kurds.”

But even some high-profile AKP figures have questioned the continued marginalisation of the Kurdish language. In early January, current justice minister Abdulhamit Gul criticised the “unknown language” categorisation of Kurdish by the judicial system.

“Marginal attitudes that we don’t approve of occur sometimes. A mother from Diyarbakir speaks Kurdish in court, but it’s recorded as ‘an unknown language.’ How can you call a language that has been spoken for a thousand years [like] that?” Abdulhamit Gul asked during a live interview on CNN Turk.

Opposition figures criticised Gul for failing to use his position of power to overturn this categorisation.


Kurdish Language Platform 

The HDP and eight other Kurdish parties established the Kurdish Language Platform in November 2018, to promote use of the language in Turkey. The platform faces an uphill battle, amid continued lack of state and political party funding for Kurdish language centers, and their ongoing shutdowns by the government. In areas like Bitlis, Tatvan and Yolalan, once held by the HDP, Kurdish-language signs have been taken down by government-appointed trustees. 

Sharafkhan Ciziri is spokesperson for the cross-party platform. He blamed the government, HDP, Kurdish parties, and even parents for the marginalization of Kurdish in modern Turkey. 

“The indifference towards the Kurdish language is related to several issues…the government is not serious when it comes to Kurdish language, plays with time, and creates obstacles for it,” Ciziri told Rudaw English. 

Kurds have been prioritizing the Turkish language for decades as a matter of survival, Ciziri said, making any transition towards the use of Kurdish bumpy at best. 

“Our [Kurdish] parties, including the HDP, are making a grave mistake. This is mostly seen from the HDP because it is a large party. No Kurdish institution must do this…many [Kurdish] parliamentarians, mayors or party leaders have not prioritised the Kurdish language. The purpose of the foundation of our platform was to do otherwise.”

The academic said that the government exploits the fact that they have opened Kurdish television channels, language departments at universities, and other outlets to say they have granted Kurds their linguistic rights.

Turkey’s government allows for the provision of optional Kurdish lessons at schools where demand is deemed high enough. However, grades acquired in these courses do not count towards final grades, and most requests for these classes are rejected by the government due to an alleged lack of qualified teachers – an implausible excuse, Ciziri said, when Kurdish language teachers are graduating from universities. 

“Parents have their shortcomings, but the main reason [for lack of Kurdish language engagement] is that the government is insincere in its efforts.” 

Editing by Shahla Omar