The sad state of Kurdish language in Turkey
In America, there is a tradition of annual “State of Union” addresses in the Congress by the serving presidents. Article II section 3 of the Constitution mandates it. With the advent of radio and television, the nation has come to take part in these often-festive rituals as well.
Most presidents give a variation of “The State of the Union is good” address and line up their accomplishments as well as their hopes for the future.
What if someone gave a “State of Kurdish Language” address to a Kurdistan Congress of all Kurds?
There isn’t one, at least national in scope, but there should be—since 40 million Kurds live in the Middle East!
What would be said to that august gathering in Amed?
Sadly: “The State of Kurdish language is not good.”
Handan Caglayan, a hybrid Kurd—Kurdish father and Turkish mother—has completed a painstaking study of her father’s language in her book, Same Home Different Languages: Intergenerational Language Shift Tendencies, Limitations, Opportunities / The Case of Diyarbakir.
Don’t let its academically verbose title intimidate you. It is a beautifully crafted work of love, a precious gift to her father perhaps, chronicling 92 years of state-sanctioned abuse of the Kurdish language by cruel Turkish overseers since 1923.
It is freely available on the Internet and I highly recommend it—even though some of its findings may inflame your Kurdish sensibilities.
Kurds are losing 17% of their population, each generation, to Turks as children abandon Kurdish for Turkish because money, jobs and success come with the Turkish language, but not Kurdish.
At that alarming rate, very few Kurdish-speaking Kurds will be left in Turkey by 2050—only 35 years away.
Even today, many Kurdish grandparents cannot talk to their grandchildren without translators.
The state of Kurdish language is not good—but it could be.
Now imagine there is a Congress of Kurdistan, and Handan Caglayan, the nation’s first freely elected president, is about to give her address on the plight of our battered Kurdish language:
Fellow citizens of Kurdistan!
The state of our Kurdish language is not good.
External threats, not internal ailments, have cruelly hammered the language of your mothers and my father to the threshold of oblivion.
Ours is the last generation that can save it. We must rescue it or consign it to the graveyard of quaint languages displayed in museums.
I started my professional life as a nurse. Our symbol, the rod of Asclepius with an entwined snake, informs us that even in the poison of a serpent there is goodness for the human kind.
The secret is the vital principle of proportionality.
It is what I pray guides my time with you tonight.
Kurdish, which is suffering relentless and merciless attack by the Turkish language, can only survive if we recognize our subtle blind spots.
The greatest threat facing the Kurdish language is not Ahmet Davutoglu or Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister and president of Turkey.
But Pepe, a television cartoon character who makes our children think, speak, and dream in Turkish.
If we don’t want to turn our children into Turks, we must rescue the priceless heirloom of our ancestors, the Kurdish language, by separating Pepe and his addictive pranks from our children.
We should unplug Turkish television until Pepe learns Kurdish.
When he does, I will be glad to let him enjoy the company of my nephews and nieces.
We can take other steps to save our Kurdish language.
During the fieldwork for my book, Same Home Different Languages, I asked Kurdish children what they thought of our language.
I wasn’t prepared for the devastating answers from their tiny mouths.
Q. How do people who speak Turkish dress?
A. They dress well. Their hair is well combed. They wear jeans and shirts. Their clothes are nice.
Q. How do people who speak Kurdish dress?
A. The women wear long skirts. Their hair is gathered up. They cover their heads. The men have messy hair.
Q. And those who speak English?
A. They are very beautiful!
I never got a chance to conduct the same study with Turkish children, but my Turkish colleagues assure me that their children also think highly of the language of Shakespeare, but care not an iota for that of Xani.
If that’s true, we should learn from Turkish scorn for our language and urge our children to show the same “affection” for their language.
We also have other remedies.
Kurds lost to the Turkish language still love Kurdish music.
So, to help Kurdish survive, we must invest in music.
The king of Kurdish pop, Sivan Perwer, is not the brightest star when it comes to politics, but the guy knows how to sing and we need him for the sake of the Kurdish language.
Let me end with a tribute to my father. He wanted the best for me and urged me to invest in the language of my mother, Turkish, for the sake of my career.
I chose poverty with dignity—rather than riches laden with evil and cruelty.
It wasn’t easy—especially while I was imprisoned. But I never lost hope.
I believed then, and still believe now, that light will ultimately chase away the dark shroud over our land—because the light of writing was invented in our neighborhood.
Kurdish will survive because we love it more than those who want to frolic over our tombstone.
It will survive because in its freedom lies the emancipation of Turks, Arabs and Persians.
It will survive because we are determined to fight for its preservation with the same spirit that was on display in Kobane notwithstanding even the newest disciples of ignorance who mistake slavery for nobility, darkness for light, and confuse domination with emancipation.
Our beloved Kurdish language will not only endure, but will prevail.
We will prevail, I believe, as William Faulkner said in accepting the 1949 Noble prize for literature, “not because we alone among creatures have an inexhaustible voice—but a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance!”
Thank you and may God bless all the peoples of Kurdistan!
* The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rudaw.