{"id":2839,"date":"2017-12-21T16:26:35","date_gmt":"2017-12-21T16:26:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/?p=2839"},"modified":"2017-12-22T13:34:08","modified_gmt":"2017-12-22T13:34:08","slug":"in-turkey-repression-of-the-kurdish-language-is-back-with-no-end-in-sight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/?p=2839","title":{"rendered":"In Turkey, Repression of the Kurdish Language Is Back, With No End in Sight"},"content":{"rendered":"

By CONSTANZE LETSCH*
\nThe Nation<\/em><\/p>\n

Since 2015, scores of Kurdish media organizations, associations, language schools, and cultural institutions have been shut down.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The space in the office is cramped. The walls are adorned with posters of sports cars and advertisements for insurance companies. Books cover the tables. Sami Tan, a linguist and a lecturer of Kurdish, apologizes for the improvised setting and the lack of more comfortable chairs. After the Turkish government shuttered the Kurdish Institute in Istanbul\u2014an association that has taught and promoted Kurdish-language study for nearly 25 years\u2014he and the other staff have moved into the available offices of a driving school in the same building.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe used to have two classrooms and a library,\u201d Tan says apologetically. \u201cNow things are a bit more uncomfortable.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cUncomfortable\u201d is an understatement. The situation for many civil-society organizations has become downright precarious. On the night of December 31, 2016, 94 associations, including the institute, were shut down on allegations of \u201cconnections to terrorist organizations.\u201d A month later, the authorities confiscated all documents, course materials, and hardware\u2014computers, two projectors, a TV\u2014as well as the school\u2019s furniture. The institute\u2019s website was taken down. In theory, the institute has the right to appeal the shutdown through a state-appointed commission, but human-rights organizations such as Amnesty International<\/a> have criticized it as insufficient, as more than 100,000 cases are pending review by just seven commissioners within a two-year deadline. \u201cIn any case, the things they took from the institute have already been given to pro-government institutions,\u201d Tan says. And tens of thousands of Turkish lira were lost.<\/p>\n

Founded in 1992, the institute became the foremost promoter of Kurdish-language education and standardization during a period of intense and violent repression of the Kurdish minority. But even Tan, who has been tried several times for his work both as a journalist and as a linguist of a criminalized language, is surprised by the return of such repression. \u201cWe never thought we would reach a point at which our schools would be shut down,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Even though they were never explicitly banned, Kurdish language and culture have been de facto criminalized since the earliest years of the Turkish Republic. The current Constitution, ratified after the military coup of 1980, recognizes only Turkish as the country\u2019s official language, thus limiting the possible use of local minority tongues. From 1983 until 1991, when Turgut \u00d6zal legalized the use of Kurdish in broadcasting and publishing, the speaking of Kurdish in public was outlawed, and people were arrested for even so much as the possession of a Kurdish-music cassette. Under the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, many restrictions on Kurdish were loosened as part of the so-called \u201cKurdish Opening,\u201d first announced by his government in 2009.<\/p>\n

But now the repression is back. Following the coup attempt of July 15, 2016, Erdogan declared a state of emergency, enabling him and the AKP cabinet to bypass Parliament and rule by decree. The post-coup crackdown, nominally limited to alleged sympathizers of US-based cleric Fethullah G\u00fclen, whom the AKP-government blames for the attempted putsch, has turned into a witch hunt targeting all opposition, including Kurds.<\/p>\n

In March the institute was reopened as the Kurdish Research Institute. The similarity of the name, registered with the authorities, is no accident, according to Tan. Does he expect another raid? Tan shrugs. \u201cThis is Turkey,\u201d he says. \u201cYou never know.\u201d Since early October, the institute has begun offering classes again, both in Kurmanji, the main Kurdish dialect in Turkey, and in Zazaki, a minority language related to Kurdish. Some 150 people are attending, but Tan says \u201cthose who come to the courses now must be courageous.\u201d<\/p>\n

Repression against Turkey\u2019s Kurdish minority has returned since the breakdown of a three-year peace process in the summer of 2015, when Kurdish activists announced local administrative autonomy for several Kurdish cities and districts, including Sur, the historic center of the predominantly Kurdish city of Diyarbakir. Ankara, unnerved by the possibility of Kurdish self-rule along Turkey\u2019s borders with Syria and Iraq, both of which have Kurdish populations, responded with a ferocious crackdown<\/a>, imposing blanket curfews for months all across the region. Turkish security forces deployed tanks and heavy artillery against armed militants, who dug trenches and set up booby traps. Local residents were caught in the crossfire. According to<\/a> the International Crisis Group, almost 3,000 people have been killed over the past two years, of whom more than 400 were civilians.<\/p>\n

The violent conflict has laid waste to entire towns and neighborhoods<\/a>, displacing more than half a million people. In Sur, one of two bilingual pre-schools was destroyed during the clashes. Both were part of the \u201cZarokistan\u201d project, a network of pre-schools that offered activities and classes in English, Kurmanji, and Zazaki, and had been supervised by experts such as linguist and academic Serif Derince. In Diyarbakir alone, Derince says, \u201caround 1,000 children from poor families were able to attend these pre-schools free of charge.\u201d Twenty more were opened across the Kurdish region in 2015. But those that were not destroyed by missiles and bombs became the victim of the increasingly anti-Kurdish politics of the Turkish government\u2014all have been shut down, destroyed, or \u201cTurkified.\u201d<\/p>\n

Based on a string of emergency decrees passed since July 2015, scores of Kurdish media organizations, associations, language schools, and cultural institutions have been shut down. Even a children\u2019s TV channel that translated cartoons such as SpongeBob SquarePants and The Smurfs into Kurdish was taken off air temporarily. Across the region, the AKP government has removed the elected mayors of more than 90 Kurdish-run municipalities and replaced them with \u201ctrustees.\u201d Dozens of pro-Kurdish politicians have been arrested on terrorism charges.<\/p>\n

For Ahmet, a human-rights activist from Diyarbakir, the renewed crackdown on Kurdish-language rights has been vicious. Having rallied for mother-tongue education for years, Ahmet (a pseudonym; he doesn\u2019t want his real name to be published for fear of reprisal) sent one of his children to a Zarokistan pre-school. \u201cWe are Kurds, we live in Diyarbakir,\u201d he says. \u201cFor us it\u2019s self-evident that our children should learn Kurdish.\u201d He rejects the government\u2019s attempts to label these early-education institutions as \u201ccriminal\u201d and their employees as \u201cterrorist supporters.\u201d \u201cI went there a lot, talked to the teachers, and made sure that the language program did not amount to Kurdish nationalist indoctrination,\u201d he explains. \u201cThe classes were excellent.\u201d For years Ahmet has criticized both the Turkish government\u2019s brutal assimilation policies and the violence of the Kurdistan Workers\u2019 Party (PKK), which has fought an off-and-on, decades-long insurgency against the Turkish government. \u201cBut,\u201d he points out, \u201cit is the government that politicizes language education.\u201d<\/p>\n

Article 42 of the Turkish Constitution states that no language other than Turkish can be taught as a mother tongue to Turkish citizens. Even teachers in the Kurdish region are banned from speaking Kurdish in class\u2014even if none of their pupils speak Turkish. For years experts have warned of the consequences of such policies. Research shows that Kurdish students who are educated in a language they do not fully understand suffer communication problems, trauma, feelings of exclusion, and shame. They are less likely to succeed in school, and more likely to drop out early.<\/p>\n

In 2012, hoping to woo Kurdish voters, the AKP started to pass reforms that granted greater freedoms to minority-language education. For the first time in the country\u2019s history, Kurdish as an elective was legalized in high schools. Two years later a law change allowed for election campaigning in languages other than Turkish and for the foundation of private minority-language schools. Interest in Kurdish classes soared.<\/p>\n

*Constanze Letsch is a journalist and longtime Turkey correspondent.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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