Children danced in the rain and sang in Kurdish at a colourful public celebration in İstanbul’s Kadıköy district on Saturday, as part of the 2025 Kurdish Language Day festivities. The event, held in Yoğurtçu Park, known for progressive gatherings since the Gezi protests of 2013, featured workshops, concerts and traditional dances, drawing attention to ongoing demands for Kurdish cultural and language rights in Turkey.
Organised by the Kurdish Language Day Coordination, a collaboration including the Kurdish Studies Association, Mezopotamya Cultural Centre and Ma Music Centre, the celebration highlighted both cultural pride and political frustration. The festival had originally been planned for 15 May but was postponed for logistical reasons.
“This is more than a festival—it’s a declaration,” said Engin Cengiz, an artist with the Mezopotamya Cultural Centre. “We won’t hide our language or identity. We want to live democratically, with our children, in peace, and in our own language.”
Artists and organisers emphasised the link between language and broader social rights. “Mother tongue education is essential,” said Cengiz. “Without it, a society cannot fully understand its literature or culture. Today must be a beginning.”
The event comes amid renewed public attention to Kurdish rights, as Turkey’s Kurdish peace talks remain at the centre of political debate. While the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has hinted at the possibility of forming a parliamentary commission to examine Kurdish issues, there have been no concrete legislative or administrative steps addressing longstanding demands for the recognition of Kurdish as an official and educational language.
Ma Music Centre coordinator Sarya Ertaş described the event as a breakthrough. “For years, we tried to organise such gatherings but were blocked. Today, to celebrate without obstruction is the exception, not the rule,” she said. “We are here to resist policies that are trying to erase our language.”
In recent weeks, rights groups such as the Human Rights Association (İHD) and regional organisations like BOTAN-DER have publicly called for Kurdish to be recognised as both an official and an educational language. In Siirt (Sêrt), demonstrators marked the holiday by marching with banners reading “Zimanê me rûmeta me ye” (Our language is our dignity) and “Bila zimanê Kurdî bibe zimanê fermî” (Let Kurdish become an official language).
Despite these growing calls, the Turkish government has yet to engage meaningfully with such demands. Language remains a sensitive issue in Turkey, where decades of assimilationist policies have limited the use of Kurdish in public life, particularly in education and thremedia.
For now, families, artists and educators are filling the gap. “This is how resistance continues—through music, through language, through joy,” said Ertaş. “But we need more than celebrations. We need rights.”
