Kurdish speech triggers Turkey row

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Kurdish speech triggers Turkey row


Ahmet Turk said Kurds had 'been oppressed because they did not know any other language' [AFP]

A Turkish Kurd politician has triggered a controversy after he delivered a speech in Kurdish in parliament, breaking a law that bars the language from official settings.

Ahmet Turk, who heads the Democratic Society Party, Turkey's largest pro-Kurdish party, began speaking on Tuesday in Turkish but then switched to Kurdish, causing state-run television to cut its live broadcast of the speech.

Kurdish is banned in schools and parliament, on grounds that it would cause ethnic divisions.

Turk was speaking to his party's parliamentary group about Unesco's international day of native languages.

"In order to show that there is nothing to fear in using other languages and to emphasise brotherhood of languages during the International Day of Mother Tongues, let me continue my speech in Kurdish," he said, just before going off air.

"Kurds have long been oppressed because they did not know any other language,'' he said. "I promised myself that I would speak in my mother tongue at an official meeting one day."

'Provocation'

Turk received a standing ovation from about 20 members of his party, but other groups have criticised his speech, saying it was a political manoeuvre ahead of the March 29 municipal elections.

Nihat Ergun, deputy chairman of the ruling AK Party's parliament group, said the speech was a "provocation".

Koksal Toptan, head of the national assembly, found fault with Turk for speaking in Kurdish, but said that he would not be fined for defying the law.

"The official language is Turkish,'' he said. "This meeting should have been conducted in Turkish."

Under the country's law, only Turkish can be spoken in political addresses.

However Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, spoke a few words of Kurdish at a campaign rally on Saturday.

TRT 6 is good for Kurds

Karahan: TRT 6 is good for Kurds
KurdishMedia.com - By Vladimir van Wilgenburg26/01/2009 00:00:00



Nefel.com columnist Enwer Karahan (45) from Sweden thinks TRT is beneficial for Kurds. He also believes that less artists and intellectuals were negative about the TV-station, if the PKK wasn’t against it. I translated some of his arguments from the Dutch version of Rudaw.


Karahan argues that the TV-station is not only created by the AKP, but also has the support of the military and the state. “Otherwise the AKP couldn’t take this big step.”


A lot of Kurdish intellectuals and writers are negative about the survival of the Kurdish dialect Kurmandji, because it’s not a ‘market language’. It doesn’t benefit you if you learn it from an economical perspective. In the region of the Regional Government of Kurdistan Sorani is the official language. “That’s why TRT-6 is a good opportunity for Kurdish to become more worthy and get more status. (On this level, the Turkish state helps Kurmanci much more then the government of the Kurdistan-region in Iraq (KRG)”.


Karahan hopes that more commercial channels will start using Kurdish and that this is the start of Kurdish commercials and the possibility of earning money with knowing Kurdish and educating more Kurds in the Kurmanci dialect. “In short, the status of the language will also grow among Turks.”


According to Karahan the TRT 6 channel will convince rich Kurds to invest in Kurdish culture and this will also increase Kurdish nationalism. “This will have the result that Kurmanci will automatically become the second official language in Turkey.”


Karahan argues that Kurds don’t have the luxury to reject this TV-station and should incite the Turkish state to take more of this kind of steps. In contrary to the ideas of Karahan, the DTP and the PKK has branded the TV-channel as an assimilation project, to assimilate Kurds more. One only wonders how one can assimilate an ethnicity, with setting up a TV-station in their own language.


Wladimir van Wilgenburg is a freelance journalist and maintains a blog at: http://vvanwilgenburg.blogspot.com/

KurdishMedia.com - By Vladimir van Wilgenburg26/01/2009 00:00:00