KURDISH: A DIFFERENT LANGUAGE
By Joost Lagendijk*
Today’s Zaman, Turkey
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, Ozal, Erdoðan
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 Diyarbakýr, Abdullah Demirbaþ, 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 Diyarbakýr 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 Diyarbakýr 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 Diyarbakýr 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 naïve 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 Diyarbakýr. 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.
*Cochairman of the Turkey-EU Joint Parliamentary Commission
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