ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Turkey’s justice minister has been criticized after denouncing the definition of Kurdish as an “unknown language” in the country’s legal system.
“Marginal attitudes that we don’t approve of occur sometimes. A mother from Diyarbakir speaks Kurdish in court, but it’s recorded as ‘an unknown language.’ How can you call a language that has been spoken for a thousand years [like] that?” Abdulhamit Gul said during a live interview on CNN Turk, aired on Saturday.
Located in southeast Turkey, Diyarbakir is seen by Kurds as the capital city of the northern part of Greater Kurdistan, encompassing Kurdish-majority areas in south-east Turkey, northeast Syria, western Iran and northern Iraq.
“The mother has been speaking Kurdish with his son for the past 50 years, but [with the court practice] you prevent her language and her faith,” he added, reported the independent Duvar news outlet. “These examples take place in narrow-minded and marginal segments.”
The minister, who belongs to the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), claimed successive Turkish governments practiced “denial and assimilation policies” until the AKP came to power in 2002.
However, Gul was slammed for his comments as a member of the largest party in the Turkish parliament, wielding enough power to maintain- or change- the status quo.
Selcuk Ozdag, the deputy leader of the newly-founded Future Party - mostly comprised of ex-AKP members and officials- described the minister’s comments as “showing off”, claiming that the government’s apparent concern over the status of the Kurdish language is disingenuous.
“The Justice Minister is the head of the institution that carries out the judicial activities and must act instead of complaining,” Ozdag tweeted on Saturday.
“He should initiate the necessary procedure against those who do not implement the law enacted on 5 May 2013,” he added, referring to the law which was passed in the Turkish parliament in 2013 which allows Kurds and other ethnic groups to defend themselves in Kurdish in court, and also provides translators.
The law was passed in the framework of the AKP government’s ceasefire with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) - a Kurdish armed group which has fought for Kurdish cultural and political rights in Turkey for decades - in the same year.
However, Kurdish officially remained an unrecognised language, as it had been for decades.
The Future Party’s manifesto blames previous Turkish governments for failing to integrate the Kurds.
“The Kurdish issue is basically sourced from the lack of democratic rights in our country and the exploitation of these shortcomings,” reads the 142-page manifesto.
Kurdish writer M. Xalid Sadini described Gul’s comments as “very important” but blamed the AKP for “alienating” the Kurdish language in an op-ed for the Independent’s Turkish edition on January 6.
He said that some Kurdish lawmakers speak in Kurdish at parliament but are attacked by Turkish lawmakers.
Kurdish MPs are not allowed to speak in Kurdish in parliament and if they are sworn in in Kurdish their oath will not be valid.
Sadini addded that some of these MPs are accused of being members of the PKK or “servants” of Masoud Barzani, head of Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) - the strongest party in the Kurdistan Region.
“When one sees or reads these things, they get upset because the solution is very simple,” said the writer.
Kurds, who were categorized as “mountain Turks” by the Turkish government until 1991, have faced severe restrictions on their native language. Totally banned until the nineties, President Turgut Ozal pledged to lift the ban on Kurdish and somewhat succeeded, changing the status from a total ban to a partial one. He also agreed to make a deal with the PKK, but his sudden death in 1993 suspended the process.
When the AKP came to power in 2012, Kurds were given more freedom of using their language but it was mostly limited to speaking Kurdish at home and in informal settings.
The AKP recently allowed Kurdish optional lessons at schools and opened higher education programs in Kurdish at universities. This helped the party race with Kurdish parties and gain good results in southeast Turkey during elections.
Some Kurdish lawmakers have risked speaking in Kurdish, angering some Turkish nationalist MPs.
According to Article 10 of the Turkish Constitution, “Everyone is equal before the law without distinction as to language, race, colour, sex, political opinion, philosophical belief, religion and sect, or any such grounds.”
