|
Kurdish: A different language
28.6.2007
by Joost Lagendijk |
|
|
|
June
28, 2007
Without a doubt, the
Kurdish issue is one of the most important political
problems in Turkey.
The problem is not only a bloody political issue
involving the deaths of more than 30,000 people, but
at the same time a crisis felt at all the layers of
the system from local governments to the Parliament.
Although the former policy of the republic, which
was founded on the practice of denying Kurds, is
about to completely rot, the “Kurdish reality” as
articulated by politicians such as Demirel, Özal,
Erdogan and others cannot be said to have been
appreciated well enough.
The most recent example of this is a decision
reached by the Eighth Chamber of the Council of the
State on June 14, 2007 to remove the mayor of the
Sur district of Diyarbakir, Abdullah Demirbaş, and
the members of the municipal council. Endorsing the
decision made by the interior minister, the high
court ruled in October 2006 that giving information
on various municipal services such as culture, art,
environment, city cleaning and health in languages
other than Turkish is against the Constitution,
removing the people in question from office.
However, the above-mentioned municipality conducted
research and discovered that 24 percent of people
spoke Turkish in their daily lives, 72 percent
Kurdish, 1 percent Arabic and 3 percent Syrian and
Armenian, resulting in the decision to give services
in these languages to reach all the people
benefiting from them. As a matter of fact, even
though one wouldn’t need to conduct a study to find
out that the majority of people in Diyarbakir speak
Kurdish -- not Turkish -- it turned out a useful one
in terms of revealing the exact figures.
The Interior Ministry described this decision as a
political one and determined that Article 222 of the
Turkish Penal Code (TCK) was violated. The high
court agreed with the ministry’s view and also came
to the opinion that “a quality has formed that
exceeds the exercising of the fundamental rights and
liberties defined and secured by the Constitution
and international conventions and that is against
the purpose and implications of these rules” and
decided to remove the mayor from office and depose
the municipal council. This decision of the Council
of the State indubitably reflects the laws in Turkey
and the constitutional realities and also clearly
defines the boundaries of Kurdish. While it is a
necessity to be respectful toward the decisions of
the high court, doing so is giving rise to dismaying
results. The mayor and the members of the municipal
council will not be able to stand for the elections
to be renewed in two months’ time and, what’s more,
they will stand trial because they committed a
“crime.”
The mayor of the Diyarbakir Metropolitan
Municipality, Osman Baydemir, is being subjected to
a similar set of interrogations and judicial
process. Most of these issues taken to court relate
to using Kurdish, as was the case with the
problematic celebration cards used in 2006 and 2007.
These cards, containing nothing more than good
wishes for the new year in Turkish, English and
Kurdish, were taken by the prosecutor as enough
evidence to launch an investigation. The prosecutor,
who seems to have spent little time on the
indictment, cut it very short and wrote: “It was
determined that the suspect used a Kurdish sentence
in the celebration card, ‘Sersela We Piroz Be’
(Happy New Year). I, on behalf of the public, demand
that he be punished under Article 222/1 of the
Turkish Penal Code.” So, it will benefit us to look
at this article of the penal code a bit closer.
Law on protection of the Turkish alphabet
Article 222 of the TCK was put into effect in the
1920s. The young republic, which decided to stop
using Arabic letters and write Turkish with the
Latin alphabet, made a very radical move in regard
to written communication. The scholars who oversaw
judicial and religious matters in the society -- and
whose command of Arabic was perfect -- were not only
divested of their positions in the state with this
move, but were also thrust outside the chain of
communication between people and the state. Through
crash courses on the new alphabet, the founders
tried to generate new “elites” and made it an
obligation to use the Latin alphabet. This article,
as well as the law that obliged the wearing of the
felt hat by every male citizen and the ban on
wearing the fez and similar “old” clothes outside
mosques, bluntly illustrates the purpose of the
lawmaker. With this article, the scholars all over
Turkey were reduced to invisibility in society.
However legally surprising it may be to see this
article used against communication in Kurdish, the
practice fits with the article’s history and
purpose. The Latin alphabet is also used to write
Kurdish in Turkey, but it has letters like “î” and
“w,” which are not used in Turkish. Legally
speaking, the penal code’s article in question
should have been directed against using these extra
letters, which are not used in Turkish. The
prosecutor did not even take the trouble to find a
link between this article and the “crime.” According
to him, Mayor Baydemir used a Kurdish sentence to
celebrate the new year and therefore committed a
“crime.” Maybe the prosecutor did not want to delve
into details as the English version of the
celebration, Happy New Year, also contains the
letter “w.” In fact the letter “w” constituting a
crime in Kurdish but not in English would be pushing
it a little in the legal and political sense.
Kurdish still a forbidden language
Similar things happened and are still happening to
Kurdish names. These letters used to write Kurdish
names are still not accepted in Turkey, and families
are forced to write such names using the Turkish
alphabet. The increasingly widespread execution of
laws against speaking Kurdish similar to Article 222
in recent years makes the issue politically
significant. Human rights defenders perceive this
development as a new means of pressure against
Kurdish people. In election campaigns, the
investigations launched into the use of Kurdish did
not produce any results and, to reach voters, the
courts that settled the matters defined the use of
local tongues as a fundamental right to be exercised
and did not see any element of guilt. The newly
launched investigations and lawsuits filed give the
impression that a political will has come into the
play to prevent Kurdish from being spoken as a
language of communication. The purpose appears to be
the prevention of using Kurdish in communication
between institutions and associations. What is
feared, perhaps, is that Kurdish may gradually
become a normal means of daily communication in
provinces like Diyarbakir where the majority of
people speak Kurdish.
Looking at the matter from a broader perspective
tells us that the decisions made by the local
government of the Sur district and similar places to
use Kurdish as a means of social communication also
has a political dimension to it, thus it would be
naive to overlook the fact that the issue goes
beyond being merely linguistics. However, the base
of the problem is still whether the Kurdish language
should be used for communication or not. After
issuing a press release, the mayors went into
details in their statements and stressed that they
would continue using Kurdish whether or not it
constituted a crime. The high-tension line in Turkey
related to the Kurdish issue is thus laid down. This
line is dividing people into two parties based on a
question of whether using a simple Kurdish sentence
like “Sersela We Piroz Be” means separatism --
therefore constituting a “crime” -- and the opinion
that Kurdish is a very normal means of communication
in a city comprising predominantly Kurds.
There are strong legal grounds supporting our view.
As part of reforms made in harmonization with the EU,
it has become possible to use “languages other than
Turkish,” thanks to a change in Article 26 of the
Constitution. These reforms include the right to
learn Kurdish and broadcast and publish in this
language. If these reforms have any meaning at all,
Kurdish should allowed use in Diyarbakir. We see
that the mayors, who must be listened to, also put
forward strong arguments.
The Turkish Law on Municipalities, just as with all
democratic countries, charges municipal
administrations with being the first to give various
information and services, envisaging that people
will participate in the decision-making process when
it comes to cultural, environmental, health and
other local issues. The mayors in return state that
to be able to give those services, they must use
Kurdish as it is spoken by the majority. They also
point out that a certain segment of the population
either doesn’t know Turkish at a necessary level or
can’t speak it at all. It will probably be
beneficial to allow the use of Kurdish in order to
reach as much of society as possible for important
issues such as, say, cleanliness. We deem it
unnecessary to stress once again that the language
is indispensable to cultural matters. Moreover, the
European Human Rights Bill -- very applicable
considering Turkey is a founding member of the
European Council -- declares it a fundamental right
of individuals to use their mother language and
receive information in that language, making it
compulsory to respect to this right.
As a consequence, we believe it is high time that
Turkey starts implementing a truly modern democracy
and leave behind the practice of finding an element
of guilt in every Kurdish sentence written on a
simple celebration card. Unless a line can be drawn
between violence and terrorism and the exercising of
fundamental rights such as communicating in one’s
native tongue, people’s rights and the law will
continue being vague concepts. Finding a lasting
solution to the Kurdish issue is only possible with
the supremacy of rights and law.
Source: todayszaman com
** The use of the term "Kurdistan" is vigorously
rejected due to its alleged political implications
by the Republic of Turkey, which does not recognize
the existence of a "Turkish Kurdistan" Southeast
Turkey.
Kurds are not recognized as an official minority in
Turkey and are denied rights granted to other
minority groups. Under EU pressure, Turkey recently
granted Kurds limited rights for broadcasts and
education in the Kurdish language, but critics say
the measures do not go far enough.
Others estimate over 40 million Kurds live in
Big Kurdistan (Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Iran, Armenia),
which covers an area as big as France, about half of
all Kurds which estimate to 20 million live in
Turkey.
Turkey is home to over 25 million ethnic Kurds, some
of whom openly sympathise with the Kurdish PKK for a
Kurdish homeland in the country's mainly Kurdish
southeast of Turkey.
Before August 2002, the Turkish government placed
severe restrictions on the use of Kurdish language,
prohibiting the language in education and broadcast
media.
The Kurdish alphabet is still not recognized
in Turkey, and use of the Kurdish letters X, W, Q
which do not exist in the Turkish
alphabet has led to judicial persecution in 2000 and
2003
The Kurdish flag flown officially in Iraqi Kurdistan
but unofficially flown by Kurds in Armenia. The flag
is banned in Iran, Syria, and Turkey where flying it
is a criminal offence"
Southeastern Turkey:
North Kurdistan ( Kurdistan-Turkey)
wikipedia
Top |
Kurd Net
does not take credit for and is not responsible for the content of news
information on this page
|
® 