Dialect Anthropol DOI 10.1007/s10624-013-9303-4
A break or continuity? Turkey’s politics of Kurdish language in the new millennium Mehmet S¸erif Derince
Ó Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013
In a court case against Kurdish politicians and activists in 2011, the Turkish judge asked the clerk to write: ‘‘It is understood that the defendant spoke in an unknown language.’’ This was the first time Kurdish was referred to as a language in Turkish court records. Previously, it had been recorded as ‘‘unknown sounds.’’ This ‘‘progress’’ from sounds to language occurred at a time when the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) claimed to have changed the state’s conventional approach to languages other than Turkish. This progress coincided with the government’s Kurdish ‘‘opening,’’ which included an official TV channel broadcasting in Kurdish, Kurdish language and literature departments at tertiary level, elective Kurdish courses in secondary schools, etc. Both neo-conservative and liberal circles in Turkey celebrate these as groundbreaking reforms. Yet, the majority of the Kurds and the Kurdish political movement consider them as simple lip services due to their context, content, form and practice as well as the ongoing violent repression of Kurdish political struggles, which I detail later. Even Turkish liberals and those Kurds who were sympathetic to the AKP government are disappointed by its repressive attitude particularly since 2009. Based on these and other debates, I argue that the limited reforms regarding Kurdish linguistic rights in last few years do not constitute a break with conventional state policies; rather they perpetuate the same Turkish hegemonic domination by other means. As Harun Ercan details in this forum, the existence of a Kurdish problem in Turkey is a by-product of the political ontology of Turkish nation-state that has excluded all non-Turkish peoples of a vast geography across Thrace, Anatolia and Kurdistan. This still intact founding ontology structures the field within which the politics of Kurdish language takes place. Until a radical change in this founding I am deeply thankful to Hisyar Ozsoy for his invaluable constructive feedback and editorial suggestions. M. S¸ . Derince (&) Sabancı University, Istanbul, Turkey e-mail: serifderince@gmail.com
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logic, one should not expect a genuine change regarding Kurdish linguistic rights in Turkey, primarily the issue of mother tongue education. The limited reforms in the realm of linguistic rights remain as token moves by the AKP government to overcome its legitimacy crisis among the Kurds and internationally and undermine the Kurdish movement as a representative of Kurds. In fact, the government has not hesitated to propagate such reforms in its public discourse as necessary steps to free Kurdish people from the Kurdish movement, an attempt to depoliticize Kurdish language by decoupling it from Kurdish political struggles. The politics of language has been a most contested issue in the Turkish state’s dealings with minoritized communities, especially the Kurds. Since the inception of the Turkish Republic, the state’s position on minoritized languages has been grounded in linguistic homogenization, which seeks to aggrandize Turkish as the national language at the expense of killing other languages and squeezing the diverse body of its citizenry in a monolingual and mono-cultural straitjacket. Due to such linguicide, the communities who were not given a ‘‘minority’’1 status in the Lausanne Treaty (1923), the international founding treaty of the Turkish Republic, have been denied the right to mother tongue education. Although international law and agreements grant mother tongue education as a universal human right, Turkey signed such agreements with reservations on the articles that might open the gate for non-Turkish communities to enjoy this right. Those who demanded collective linguistic rights were severely punished, their efforts often ended in long prison sentences or exile. The Kurd’s demands and approach to official language policies have taken shape in relation to the strategies and tactics deployed by the state. In periods of total denial of the existence of Kurds as a people and their language, Kurdish efforts mainly aimed at proving that the Kurds and their language actually did exist. In times of relative state flexibility, demands such as publishing Kurdish books and journals or listening to Kurdish music were articulated in political discourse and diverse campaigns were organized accordingly. One crucial turning point in the politics of Kurdish language was the coup d’e´tat of 1980, when any demand and struggle regarding Kurdish language were brutally repressed and a huge number of Kurdish activists faced torture and persecution. Kurdish was strictly banned, even during prison visits. Yet, the violence of the coup simultaneously led to the beginning of a new area in the history of the Kurds and Kurdish language. For example, the Kurdish intellectuals and activists who fled to exile in Europe learned how to read and write in their mother tongue and wrote various works across a wide spectrum of genres, including dictionaries, grammar books, poetry, novels, short stories as well as political texts. Some of these were secretly published and distributed toward the end of the 1980s. Likewise, the movement of large groups of displaced Kurds to western metropolitan areas of Turkey throughout the 1990s— which was a part of the state’s counter-insurgency campaign against the PKK, paved 1
The Lausanne Treaty specified the Armenian, Greek and Jewish communities as the only minorities in Turkey. The Kurds were not given a minority status and were included into the Turkish Republic on the basis of their shared Islamic identity. Hence, while minority communities have access to education in their own language, even if with several limitations and under state surveillance, the Kurds were denied the right to mother tongue education and to use Kurdish in other spheres of public life.
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the way for the emergence of several politically engaged culture and art centers or institutes, which also published literary works in Kurdish among other activities. These centers and institutes helped many young Kurds to professionalize in areas such as journalism and literature, which eventually led to more publications and the establishment of a Kurdish news agency and a newspaper. These developments strengthened the struggle to free Kurdish language and increased Kurdish demands for collective linguistic and cultural rights. During the 1990s, the politics over Kurdish language continued to be a major source of tension between the Kurds and the Turkish state. Many Kurdish books were banned and confiscated. Kurdish newspapers were repeatedly closed down, and the owners and editors of Kurdish publishing houses and independent Kurdish authors were punished, both legally and extra-legally.
Turkey’s language policy in the new millennium The new millennium started with the then hot topic of Turkey’s accession to the European Union (EU) as a member. One of the requirements for this membership was cultural liberalization in the form of removing restrictions and reservations on linguistic and cultural rights for minorities. The coalition government preceding the AKP passed a ‘‘harmonization package’’ in 2002, opening the way for broadcasting ‘‘in different languages and dialects used traditionally by Turkish citizens in daily life’’ and the teaching of Kurdish in private courses. Following these, some private institutions started offering Kurdish as a ‘‘foreign language.’’ Yet, this could not last long, as state bureaucracy devised varied obstacles to make teaching Kurdish practically impossible, and most Kurds refused to study their mother tongue in their own country with the status of ‘‘foreign language’’ and through private courses. The AKP came to power in 2002 with a promise of strong commitment to Turkey’s accession to the EU. As part of this commitment, it initiated some other reforms in the field of Kurdish cultural and linguistic rights. Later formulated as ‘‘the Kurdish opening,’’ these reforms were viewed by the liberal Turkish and European publics as a crucial break with the conventional state attitude to minority rights and the Kurdish issue. However, each of these reforms came with serious limitations and ideological agendas. A few details are in order. The broadcasts in different languages and dialects, including Kurdish, on national radio started in 2004. But, these broadcasts were limited to only a few hours a week, and their content was significantly restricted. The TV programs could not be used as mediums of instruction in these languages and dialects. Also, TV programs for children and cartoons were not allowed with the fear that this would strengthen their ties with their mother tongue and hinder their assimilation into Turkish culture and education. Besides, there were other bureaucratic obstacles such as requiring broadcasting corporations to provide simultaneous translation or daily reports. Later in 2009, TRT-6, a 24-h TV channel, began to broadcast in Kurdish. This channel still does not have a legal status. Also, TV programs for children and cartoons are still forbidden. The same year, some private universities started offering Kurdish as an elective foreign language course,
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yet the applications of some public universities to offer Kurdish courses were not accepted. More importantly, a graduate program in Kurdish language and literature started in Mardin Artuklu University in 2010. Rather than being referred to as Kurdish, this program was named as ‘‘Institute of Living Languages.’’ Only later an undergraduate program started to receive students under the name of Department of Kurdish Language and Literature. Finally, elective Kurdish courses started in secondary schools in 2012. These are offered from the fifth grade onwards, under the name of ‘‘living languages’’ and with a minimum of ten-student enrollment. None of these changes were backed with legal guarantees, which led to serious bureaucratic difficulties making them almost impossible to put into practice. One interesting dimension of these debates is the question of timing. Although some of these changes were among Kurdish demands at some point in the past, the Kurds do not currently view them as significant developments. An illustrative example is concerned with Kurdish as an elective course. Many Kurds, mostly university students, organized a campaign in 2002 for Kurdish elective courses in schools. The state responded harshly. Hundreds of students active were expelled from schools and many of them jailed. Ten years later, in 2012, the government allowed Kurdish to be taught as an elective course in secondary schools, although there was no such Kurdish demand at the time. Unsurprisingly, these elective courses did not create any excitement among the Kurds. On the contrary, the majority of Kurds who demand full mother tongue education criticized this move of the government as another trap to trivialize Kurdish demands. Due to the timing, form and content of these reforms, most Kurds consider them not as systematic efforts as part of a genuine agenda of democratization and peaceful resolution of the Kurdish conflict, but as token moves to ease internal and external pressures and to co-opt Kurdish demands. The government devised such reforms under multiple pressures. The Turkish left, liberals and even moderate conservatives had criticized previous governments for being too authoritarian and militarist with respect to Kurdish linguistic and cultural rights. Such criticisms had somewhat compelled the government to revise conventional state policies, when it came to power with the motto of ‘‘change.’’ A more compelling reason for the AKP to reorient its Kurdish policy was the start of formal negotiations for accession to the EU, which required improvement in minority rights in accordance with the Copenhagen Criteria. Besides, after the American occupation of Iraq in 2003, the Kurdish Regional Government stepped into regional politics with a strong autonomous status in Iraq, which also became a reference point for many Kurds in Turkey. This put further pressure on the Turkish government to pursue a policy of relative liberalization to respond to Kurdish demands. Finally, previously concentrated on more political demands, the PKK, legal Kurdish parties and local NGOs started more effective campaigns in the field of cultural and linguistic rights. These campaigns gained tremendous support from the Kurds, and cultural and linguistic rights have become a key element that inscribes the core of Kurdish demands for political recognition in Turkey. One other reason for this increasing interest in the politics of Kurdish language is the fact that the transmission of mother tongue to the new Kurdish generations has decreased to an alarming level in the last two decades. Turkish has become the
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dominant language in many domains in which Kurdish used to be strong. This language shift or attrition alerted many Kurds, who took it is a sign of assimilation and started augmenting linguistic demands and organizing stronger and more effective campaigns. When one looks at Kurdish cultural and political activities in the last few years, one can easily notice the weight given to the preservation and maintenance of Kurdish language. In such a historical and political context, the steps taken by the AKP government have fallen far short of meeting Kurdish demands. In the last decade, the Kurds have formulated their politics of linguistic rights around mother tongue education. This demand reached its peak, when the Kurdish movement proposed its project of ‘‘democratic autonomy’’ as the solution to the Kurdish conflict, which foresees the establishment of several locally governed autonomous administrative regions in Turkey, including one or more autonomous Kurdish regions whose official language will be Kurdish along with Turkish as the national language. Yet, the response of the government to these demands has been insidious. On the one hand, the government has once again started suppressing and silencing all different opposition groups in the country, first and foremost the Kurds and those in solidarity with them, via direct imprisonment or threatening. On the other hand, it has continued to take limited steps regarding the use of the Kurdish language in certain areas such as prison visits and election campaigns. Given the wave of violent repression of Kurdish politics that goes hand in hand with token changes in language rights, the Kurds perceived these steps as insincere methods and means to perpetuate linguistic assimilation as well as political domination. The following example is a good case in point. Kurdish politicians and activists prosecuted under the Koma Civakeˆn Kurdistan (KCK—Union of Communities in Kurdistan) trials have been insisting on using their mother tongue in their defense, asking the court to appoint interpreters. The court repeatedly responded with outright refusal. When an activist spoke in Kurdish during a hearing, the judge dictated the court clerk to write, ‘‘it is understood that the defendant spoke in an unknown language.’’ In some of the later trials, the court defined the language spoken by defendants as ‘‘a language that is supposed to be called Kurdish.’’ The struggle for the right to defense in mother tongue gained more visibility when Kurdish prisoners started a hunger strike in September 2012, which would last 68 days. The strikers demanded the right to education and defense in their mother tongue as two of their three demands. The government found the demand for education irrelevant while agreeing to draft a law toward recognizing the right to defense in mother tongue. Yet, the drafted law once again revealed the government’s trivializing logic. It specified that the defendants could have oral defense in Kurdish only in two phases of the trial process: in their first defense after the indictment is read and in the final phase of the defense after the deliberation is read out. Besides, the defendants will have to pay for interpretation expenses. Worse, if the judge thinks that the defendant is abusing it to impede the trial, he can deny his/her right to defense in mother tongue. Hence, this right is ultimately left to the mercy of Turkish judges, who were convicted many times by the European Court of Human Rights due to their arbitrary decisions that have led to severe violations of the rights of prosecuted Kurds.
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Due to such state practices, the reforms passed by the government regarding Kurdish language have been approached with doubts and, in many instances, boycotted by the Kurdish movement and large sections of the Kurdish population. Indeed, the reforms such as broadcasting in Kurdish, elective Kurdish courses or institutes of ‘‘living languages’’ in universities have not been among the primary or real concerns and demands of the Kurds in Turkey. The Kurdish movement declared that it would not take any step of the government as constructive of peace and reconciliation, unless Kurdish becomes a medium of education in public schools and is granted an official status. The movement views the reforms passed so far as the continuation of assimilation and domination by other means.
Discussion and conclusion Although temporary hopes for some kind of reconciliation have appeared a few times during the last decades, a consensus between the AKP government and Kurdish movement over Kurdish language rights seems to be difficult to achieve. It is true that the government has taken some steps under domestic and international pressures, but only through a process of decontextualizing Kurdish demands, presenting the reforms as the state doing favors to the Kurds and instrumentalizing these for its political agenda—widely advertising these changes before the elections in order to secure Kurdish votes. Besides, the reforms were designed behind closed doors and without any dialog with Kurdish institutions or representatives of the Kurdish movement. Many Kurds believe that the government has been utilizing the so-called openings as a means to undermine the Kurdish movement and without attending to the core of the problem. More importantly, the changes have not gone beyond formulating Kurdish linguistic and cultural rights on the basis of limited individual rights and within the confines of an illusive liberal framework that depoliticizes and trivializes language rights and excludes central Kurdish demands. Besides, even when passing reforms, the government has not abstained from publicly demeaning and insulting Kurdish language. The Prime Minister has recently said that mother tongue-based education will divide the country and he will not allow it. A vice-president of the AKP, Bulent Arinc, claimed in a TV program that Kurdish was not ‘‘a language of civilization,’’ hence inappropriate for being used as a medium of education. A founding executive of the AKP, a professor of Constitutional law and president of the parliamentary commission to draft the new Constitution, Burhan Kuzu, went further by saying that demanding mother tonguebased education was ‘‘to yield to the temptation of Satan.’’ A new vice-president of the AKP, Numan Kurtulmus, unabashedly suggested that, instead of the state, private schools had to deal with education in Kurdish, as this would be expensive, no one would demand it and the issue would be resolved automatically. Given these, it would not be unfair to argue that the reforms of the government do not point to a break with the assimilationist political ontology of the Turkish state. The Kurdish movement demands collective cultural and linguistic rights, namely mother tonguebased education, the free use of Kurdish in all domains of public life and, lately, an official status for Kurdish language in the context of democratic autonomy. The
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fierce political struggles on other fronts of the Kurdish problem deeply shape the politics over Kurdish language rights, making it even more difficult to reach a consensus. While any discourse of the AKP government under the name of ‘‘opening’’ easily reaches to the widest national and international public thanks to strong media support, its repressive acts do not get much publicity. This has contributed to the government’s image that it is radically changing conventional state policies. While passing these reforms, the government simultaneously argues that it is the Kurdish movement itself who does not want a change in status quo. Rendering invisible Kurdish demands in this way and channeling Turkish public sentiment against Kurdish political circles deplete the hope that the state would recognize collective Kurdish rights. Thus, discourses such as ‘‘living together in fraternity,’’ which once used to find strong support among the Kurds, have left their place to increasing distrust toward the state, promoting the sense among many Kurds that Kurdish language rights can be achieved only after a political and administrative status is secured. The escalating repression of Kurdish politicians and increasing death toll due to the ongoing war are further deepening and swelling the Kurdish discontent with the state. Many Kurds view the unfair Turkish election system, detention of Kurdish deputies, mayors, executives and activists of the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), arbitrary restrictions of BDP’s political activities as well as the AKP’s attempts to revoke the immunity of some Kurdish deputies as a ‘‘political genocide.’’ The massacre of 34 Kurdish civilians smuggling goods across the Iraqi/ Turkish border with Turkish F-16 bombs and the death of Kurdish guerillas whose funerals turn into massive protests have also added to Kurdish discontent and rage in the recent years. Besides, in addition to the de facto Kurdish state in Iraq, the possibility of an autonomous Kurdish region in Syria seems to contribute to the already existing strong sense of national identity among the Kurds in Turkey. This strengthening national sentiment is fuelling up the rivalry between the Turkish state and the Kurdish movement. Some Kurdish groups have started openly advancing the idea of rejecting the Turkish state altogether, fighting for their rights rather than negotiating with the state. Although this structure of feeling is not the dominant one among the larger Kurdish community, at least for now, it has made some Kurds to believe that the exercise of language right will be secured only with the independence of the Kurdish land. In the meantime, some Kurds have started building up their own autonomous structures. A case in point is the teaching of Kurdish through locally organized courses and literacy campaigns by several closely connected Kurdish language institutes to develop and maintain mother tongue both in Kurdistan and in Turkish cities where displaced Kurds live. So far the pragmatist moves taken by the government under domestic and international pressures could somehow manage the conflicts in the field of Kurdish linguistic rights. But the ongoing violent regional developments, the escalation of armed conflicts in Turkey and the growing Kurdish discontent are pressing the government to quit the logic of management toward a genuine and comprehensive solution. Such a solution would require a radical change in the founding political ontology of the Turkish nation-state, however. Considering the calendar of
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municipal, parliamentary and Presidency elections that are scheduled to be held in 2014 and 2015, it seems unlikely that the AKP will be willing to take the risk of finding a genuine solution in the near future that may cost the party Turkish nationalist votes. But, if it does not take the risk now due to populist electoral concerns, a few years later may be too late. Nobody knows what other options for the Kurds may come out of the boiling cauldron of the Middle East.
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