3. Kurdish as the native language: A tactic, or a necessity?
Recent steps taken in regard to the Kurdish language, especially the Kurdish translation of the Qur’an printed by the Religious Affairs Directorate are very important and gratifying improvements. |
It is obvious that the issue labeled as “Kurdish as the native language” is quite a sensitive matter for some of our Kurdish brothers. Many mothers and fathers speak only Kurdish in the Southeast, and many are concerned that their primary language would be lost on that account. Such concern seems to be reasonable in view of the practices in Turkey’s history in having the Kurdish language forgotten, and casting off people who speak or write in Kurdish, even having gone so far as to imprison them in the past. As we will see in the following parts, the Ergenekon terror organization also tyrannized our Kurdish brothers on various matters, including the use of the Kurdish language.
Let us make one point: Making Kurdish forgotten as a language or casting it off will never be encountered in this country again as we will definitely never allow this to happen. On the contrary, Kurdish should be spoken a great deal more as an important value of our country; courses and associations should be instituted for teaching the language, the number of works in Kurdish should increase and Kurdish songs should be listened to more.
The initiatives of our government in the last decade on this matter are very promising. The launch of TRT Kurdi, and various other openings for Kurdish, and most important of all, the preparation of the Qur’an’s translation into Kurdish by the Directorate of the Religious Affairs are substantial improvements. The fact that the Qur’an has not been published in Kurdish till now shows the severity of the pressure on Kurdish language. It is well known that the Directorate of Religious Affairs is making preparations also for printing the translation of the Qur’an in other languages and dialects in Turkey. This should be viewed as very good news and it will be highly beneficial to undertake such work in Turkey in other languages such as Albanian, Armenian and Greek as well.
On the matter of native language: Our Kurdish brothers have to be very careful on this matter because the discussion on native language is deliberately plotted by the PKK as a tactic in order to discriminate between Turks and Kurds living in the same country. The PKK has always resorted to taking advantage of Kurdish nationalism as a veil to conceal its communist attacks or utilize it as a justification for its terrorism. That is why they have brought this topic of native language to the agenda in order to make it seem as if their intention is to save the Kurds. We need to recall here once again: It is obvious that the bloody attacks that the PKK has started again is not for the salvation of our Kurdish brothers.
Şemdin Sakık explained why the condition for “Using Kurdish as a native language in the public domain” was added to the list of demands in the hunger strike started by “PKK’s coercion” in 58 prisons all over Turkey by the 483 prisoners affiliated with the PKK and PJAK:
For example, at the beginning, the request for "Education in Native Language" was not among the targets of the strike; it was obvious that the ones who planned for it had forgotten to add that slogan to the list of demands.
But, why?
Forgetting is the activity in the brain to clear away unnecessary things. They forgot because the PKK… never had any issues for “Education in Native Language”. On the contrary, any new step made by the government to improve the Kurdish language and culture, such as the launch of the TRT-6 broadcasts along with Kurdish being included amongst elected courses in school curricula, drew a reaction on their side and they did everything to frustrate these steps. They even threatened the Kurdish girl Rojin because she was working for TRT-6. They are essentially so distant to the Kurdish culture that they even do not speak Kurdish in their daily dealings. That was why they did not remember adding the “Education in Native Language” item to the list of demands, because they had no such purpose. Why they annexed it later on was to receive the support of Kurdish people to this so-called protest and conceal the real purpose of the protest.
In truth, it is a known fact that Turkish is used for communication by the PKK in its publications and correspondence while again Turkish is spoken in the meetings of the PKK unless there is another occasional requisite. Many people are not proficient in Kurdish, and the Kurdish dialect spoken in different villages or provinces is not similar; that is why Kurdish is not preferred as a way of communication. For that reason, the best way of communication between them is Turkish. They have again invariably referred to works in Turkish to read and understand their ideology because of the insufficiency of the publications in Kurdish.
In that regard, the PKK has no concerns for Kurdish language in reality. The terrorist organization gets use of the native language concept to create an image that “We are defending the rights of Kurds,” and in this way, they focus on winning over public opinion in the Kurdish community. Yet, Kurdish is not a preferable language spoken among the younger Kurdish generation. It is not possible to open to the world, or attain historical knowledge, or have access to works on literature, science, technology, general culture or politics in the Kurdish language. While it is possible to find a renowned foreign work published in Turkish, this is not the case for the Kurdish language. An analysis carried out by the 21st Century Institute in Diyarbakır is below:
There are a considerable amount of people who doesn't speak Kurdish because they are ethnically Turkish and also a great majority of people who speak very little Kurdish or Zaza language even though they are ethnically Kurds or Zazas; thus they all speak only Turkish in their daily lives. The fact that the local tradesmen stick to Turkish when they put on job postings, despite all the efforts carried out by the local municipalities to make everything Kurdish, demonstrates that the efforts to make everything Kurdish is not a natural process but a political one.
The Diyarbakır Ramparts and Hevsel Gardens cultural landscape are on the world heritage list of UNESCO. No one will be able to prevent us from living with our Kurdish brothers in these beautiful lands. |
This is of course a political process. No ethnic group living on these lands ever since the Ottomans made it a point to distinguish themselves with their mother tongues. Although the Ottoman State consisted of a large variety of ethnic groups who were completely different from one another, the official language of the Ottomans was always Turkish. It was mandatory for governors and deputies in the Parliament to know and speak Turkish. The language used in the Enderun School, which raised state officials, was Turkish and the recordings of court proceedings were also kept in the Turkish language. This was the case in Arabia, Egypt, Benghazi, Tripoli, Rumelia, the Balkans, in short, everywhere under the rule of the Ottomans. This was because every individual living on Ottoman lands was regarded as Turkish, a representative of the nation, regardless of his religion and race. The concept of “Turkishness” mentioned here and the use of the Turkish language as the primary language is not an attitude aimed to exalt an ethnic group but a concept identifying the integrity of a nation.
When we look at the democratic countries of our day, we will see that the current implementation is no different than this one. Among the international conventions, European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) jurisprudence is the one consisting of the most admissible verdicts with the highest power of sanction in force today in Europe and worldwide, especially in respect to human rights. Consequently, taking the ECHR as the truest reference guide in not only matters of human rights, but also regarding language, culture and identity, which also constitute the parts of human rights is the accurate approach. ECHR jurisprudence contains numerous rulings that reject the search for a different language in unitary states. Some examples on this matter are below:
An appeal was made from Turkey to the ECHR in which a citizen who wanted to change his name and use letters such as q, w and x letters that are not used in the Turkish language, appealed to the court after exhausting domestic remedies. The ECHR overruled the claim.
An appeal was made from Turkey to the ECHR in which a citizen who wanted to change his name and use letters such as q, w and x letters that are not used in the Turkish language, appealed to the court after exhausting domestic remedies. The ECHR overruled the claim.
The Federal Court of Switzerland, taking the command of the constitution related with the use of languages into consideration, refused to hear the cases demanding to give education and open schools in languages other than Switzerland's national languages of German, French, Italian and Retoromanian and its official languages (German, French and Italian), no matter what the mother tongue of the petitioning citizen is.
The PKK, in its own twisted ways, is trying to snatch the Southeast region from Turkey through a series of phases. For this communist organization, breaking apart the official language will be a factor that will expedite this disengagement the most. That is because once they do this, eventually a Kurdish citizen who would come to Ankara or Istanbul from the Southeast would suffer the difficulties of being a stranger to the culture and a doctor, who would be assigned to the Southeast from the city in North would not be able to communicate with his patients; likewise, a teacher who would be assigned from Antalya would be unable to teach anything to his students. That would bring about severely disconnected communities living in the same country but speaking different languages and are unable to communicate with each other. In order to lay the grounds for this so-called "natural separation" the PKK is using this mask of the mother tongue. They have invented this as the shortest way to completely isolate the Southeast of the country and to establish a communist administration therein to pressure the people of the region, as they like.
Sadi Somuncuoğlu, one of our former ministers, summarized the situation as follows:
The primary goal of these discussions about language is to legalize and legitimize the bloody terror targeting our very existence under the guise of "language and cultural rights"; the second goal is to ensure the switch to a "bilingual-two identity" state structure. In this way, the path to fragmentize our country will be opened.
This plot designed to divide the Turkish nation, which has lived on the same lands for hundreds of years, should not deceive our Kurdish brothers. The Kurdish language should of course be taught in schools; it should definitely be encouraged and kept alive and enriched with literary, political and artistic works. The Kurdish language should be preserved and widespread as an important value and part of Turkish people. However, by attempting to make Turkish forgotten as a language and teaching Kurdish alone in the region, this treacherous terror organization wants to establish a foundation to create a very deeply-rooted problem, using language as a means to externalize and alienate our Kurdish mothers, fathers, grandfathers, grandmothers and our Kurdish sisters and brothers from the rest of Turkey and to use this as a means of separation.
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