Fréderike Geerdink
It’s International Mother Tongue Day on 21 February! Pîroz be! It’s wonderful to celebrate the richness of languages and recognise the importance of the language our mothers passed on to us. But I am also cynical about it, not in the last place because this day was declared by the United Nations. If these united nation-states were serious about protecting languages, like Kurdish, they could do much more. Recognise forced assimilation as an act of genocide, for example.
Earlier this month, the UN Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese visited the Netherlands. I went to three events where she spoke. Of course, the genocide inflicted on the Palestinian people by Israel was discussed. What drew my attention though, was that the right to self-determination played a big role in her analysis of what is happening in Palestine.
She wrote a report (pdf) from this perspective in 2022, in which the right to self-determination is mentioned as a ‘platform right’. This means that it is close to impossible for a people to enjoy any fundamental rights if their right to self-determination (which is the right to exist as a people with political, economic and cultural rights) is not respected. In her report ‘Anatomy of a genocide’, from last year, the denial of the Palestinians’ right to self-determination is mentioned as part of the ‘historical background against which the current atrocities in Gaza are unfolding’.
Terrified
Now, let me put this in a Kurdish perspective. Like the Palestinians, the Kurds are denied the right to self-determination. This has been going on since at least the foundation of the Republic of Turkey in 1923 – let me focus on Kurdistan occupied by Turkey in this column. This right doesn’t necessarily mean that you have the right to a state, but enables a nation to exist as such. Rights are laid down in, amongst others, European treaties, which give groups like Frisians in the Netherlands, Catalonians in Spain and Welsh in the UK the opportunity to pursue their rights to the extend they wish to. Turkey never signed such treaties, terrified as it is to grant Kurds and other nations within its borders the right to be who they are.
Not wanting to give the people living within your borders the right to live as a nation, logically means that you don’t want them to exist at all. In the case of Israel’s settler-colonialism, this is inevitably leading to genocide as described in the Genocide Convention. In Kurdistan, this is less clear. Why is this less clear? Because the Genocide Convention explicitly focusses on acts of physical violence carried out to intentionally destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.
Spirit
Other ways to destroy a group are not recognised as genocidal. Forced assimilation, the criminalisation of political representation, the denial and suppression of the group’s culture, language, history and heritage, the theft and destruction of its natural wealth, trying to break a nation’s spirit: all happening in Kurdistan. There can be no doubt about the intention of these acts to erase the Kurds as a people: it is woven into the very fabric of the Turkish state, which requires everybody in Turkey to be a Turk. The state may no longer be able to deny that Kurds exist, but the policies aimed to annihilate them, continue unabated. Kurds must still be Turks. This connects to something else I heard Francesca Albanese say several times: “Genocide is not an act, it’s a process.” Very applicable to Kurdistan.
Of course, such acts were not coded into the Genocide Convention in 1948. There had been proposals to do so, but it didn’t happen due to political reasons. Logical: the whole concept of the nation-state is at odds with the right to self-determination. That sounds contradictory because isn’t the nation-state the ultimate fulfilment of that right? Well, for the dominant group in the territory that ends up being a nation-state, yes, but not for the groups that are forced to live within borders that weren’t made for them. Kurds, Palestinians, Catalonians, Uyghurs, Rohingya, Sámis, Frisians, Scots – the list is endless. Putting non-physical acts of genocide into the convention, would incriminate many if not all nation-states.
Minorities
Several treaties have tried to secure the rights of these groups. Minorities, they are often called, but I don’t like the term, which I learned from Kurds because they insist on being treated as co-owners of the land. These groups must be equals in every sense, not having ‘minority rights’ but full rights. So these treaties aren’t sufficient, but underscore the denial of the right to self-determination that comes with an international order based on nation-states. Not to mention that such treaties for minority rights only exist in a small part of the world, and even then not always work to the full benefit of the groups they aim to protect.
So then 25 years ago this year, the United Nations came up with the ‘International Mother Tongue Day’. Hurray! A day to celebrate languages that the very states that invented this day often try to suppress and erase. A day with no obligations for states attached and from which people cannot derive any rights whatsoever. A day as a token gesture, to obscure the possible genocidal act of starving a language to death. What a disgrace.
Still, we should take every single opportunity to keep Kurdish alive, as an act of resistance against the genocidal intentions of the Turkish state. Rojê Zimanê Dayikê pîroz be! Berxwedan jiyan ê!
Fréderike Geerdink is an independent journalist. Follow her on Bluesky (or X) or subscribe to her acclaimed weekly newsletter Expert Kurdistan.
