The Van metropolitan municipality added warnings in Kurdish to the traffic markings in the city last week.
One such crosswalk warning that read “pêşî peya,” Kurdish for “pedestrians first” was vandalized and defaced with the phrase “Turkey is Turkish and will remain Turkish.”
“Racist elements who cannot tolerate the rich culture of our country and city have carried out a heinous attack on these warning signs,” read a statement from the Van municipality on X.
“We condemn this attack. Such an assault on Kurdish, a language spoken by a significant portion of our city's population, is unacceptable,” it added.
The municipality called on Turkey’s judicial authorities to take action against the “racist approach,” adding that they will “use all our legal rights to protect the city's rich cultural fabric.”
The Kurdish language was banned for much of the 20th century following the birth of Turkey's modern state in the 1920s. The public use of the language was illegal, including speaking, publishing, or singing in Kurdish.
Although Kurdish is no longer banned in Turkey, public displays of the language still face backlash by Turkish ultranationalists.
Several ultranationalists responded to the Van municipality’s statement on X by quoting articles from the Turkish constitution regarding the Turkish identity of Turkey and the official language being Turkish. While others reiterated the vandals’ statement of “Turkey is Turkish and will remain Turkish”.
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 the use of Kurdish, but successive Turkish governments have cracked down on its use.
Van municipality announced later Friday that they have added back the Kurdish traffic markings on the street.
