Turkey: HDP welcomes opposition call to recognize Kurdish language
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Turkey’s pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) on Monday welcomed calls by Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu to recognize the use of the Kurdish language in civic institutions and education.
The CHP, Turkey’s main opposition party, hopes to secure the Kurdish vote in the June 23 rerun of Istanbul’s municipal election.
Education in one’s mother tongue is “one of the natural and irrevocable rights” of everyone, Kilicdaroglu, leader of CHP, told guests at an Iftar meal in Istanbul late Sunday.
“This includes Kurdish as well. In the framework of human rights, the realization of this is the biggest will of all of us.”
“Legal usage, learning and teaching of Kurdish is absolutely a legal regulation and this legal regulation needs to be done. Where? In the parliament,” he said.
“I believe all parliamentarians will say ‘Yes’ to it if proper groundwork is established.”
In a party meeting in Ankara on Monday, Saruhan Oluc, deputy chairman of the HDP bloc in the Turkish parliament, said Kilicdaroglu’s comments are “significant”.
“All parties in the parliament have to meet on this subject and find a solution,” he said.
Oluc called on Turkey’s ruling and opposition parties to push the issue through parliamentary commissions.
The HDP not only supports the official recognition of the Kurdish language but also campaigns on Kurdish national rights, identity, and culture, Oluc said.
Although they account for more than 15 percent of Turkey’s roughly 80 million-strong population, Kurds are denied the right to be taught in the Kurdish language.
An optional Kurdish language course has been added to the curriculum, but this can only take place one a week and classes must have a minimum of 12 students.
The Kurdish language is not officially outlawed in Turkey, but its use in some civil institutions, including courts of law, is prohibited. Translators are not always provided.
Some higher education institutions, like Mardin University, do offer Kurdish language courses for undergraduate and graduate studies.
Senior officials, including President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, even use Kurdish phrases when speaking at election rallies in Kurdish provinces.
There is also a 24-hour Kurdish-language state media channel, TRT Kurdi, which broadcasts political, cultural, children’s, and religious programming in different Kurdish dialects.
Kilicdaroglu made a similar call in April 2016 when he said the Kurdish issue is a political issue and can only be resolved in parliament with the consent of the main political parties.
“Turkey’s four main political parties have to sit together and resolve an issue which has not been resolved in 35 years,” he told journalists in Adapazari.
Kilicdaroglu said he had called on the parliamentary speaker to summon parties for this purpose and the speaker approved “but he did not invited political leaders.”
Istanbul race
Kilicdaroglu’s CHP was able to defeat the ruling Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) candidate in Istanbul in the March 31 local elections. The HDP claims this would not have been possible without the votes of more than one million Kurdish voters in the metropolis.
Ekrem Imamoglu, who defeated the AKP’s Binali Yildirim by a slim margin, told Rudaw in mid-April there is not a problem with Kurdish demands for mother tongue education.
“My fellow Kurdish citizens have other needs as well. They say ‘We want to learn our language’. This is very natural. There is no problem with such demands from people in our areas to have courses and education, let alone my fellow Kurdish citizens,” he said.
Both the CHP and AKP are eagerly courting Kurdish votes in the upcoming re-run of Istanbul’s municipal election on June 23 after the results were annulled.
The Turkish government recently granted permission for jailed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) founder Abdullah Ocalan to meet with his lawyers on May 2 after years held in isolation. They visited him again on Wednesday, when he called on supporters demanding an end to his solitary confinement to suspend their 200-day hunger strike.
Leyla Guven, the HDP lawmaker who initiated the hunger strikes, accepted Ocalan’s call and broke the strike.
The government move is widely interpreted as an AKP policy to secure Kurdish votes – a claim denied by Turkey’s justice minister.