Sarah Glynn
In a world in which the persecution of ethnic groups is as relentless as it has ever been, Mother Language Day serves as a reminder of all those whose culture and identity are denied and who are shut off by language from opportunities others take for granted. The 21st of February was the day in 1952 when students protesting in Dhaka for the official recognition of Bengali were shot dead by the Pakistani police. It became an important date in the Bangladeshi calendar, and in 1999 was declared an international day by UNESCO.
Suppression of the Kurdish language continues to be a central part of the suppression of Kurdish identity. For the hundred years of the Turkish Republic, Turkish has been the only official language, and generations of Kurdish children have been educated in schoolrooms where Turkish is the only language spoken. As intended, many Kurdish families now choose to speak Turkish with their children to avoid disadvantaging them in this hostile milieu.
When Turkey ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, in 1995, they put reservations on the three articles that stipulated a child’s cultural and linguistic rights, including article 30, which states that “a child… shall not be denied the right, in community with other members of his or her group, to enjoy his or her own culture, to profess and practise his or her own religion, or to use his or her own language.”
The treatment of minorities in Turkey is dictated by the hundred-year-old Treaty of Lausanne, which only recognises religious minorities, and so not the predominantly Muslim Kurds. The Lausanne treaty was interpreted to apply to Armenians, Greeks, and Jews, who were allowed their own schools – though this didn’t prevent them suffering from oppression and prejudice. Belatedly – only in 2013 after a court case – the Turkish government conceded that Assyrians should also be included.
Kurdish was originally banned from all public spaces in the Republic, but from the 1990s, there has been some loosening of the rules – especially in the period from 2009 to 2014, when the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) was trying to woo Kurdish votes. In 2012, Kurdish was allowed as an elective subject in high school, and in 2013 the ban was lifted on the letters Q ,W, and X, which are used in Kurdish but not Turkish and were deliberately excluded when Turkey adopted the Roman alphabet in 1928. In Diyarbakır, and other Kurdish areas, Kurdish language nursery schools were established. But after 2015, when Recep Tayyip Erdoğan turned his back on the Kurds and allied with the ultra-nationalist National Movement Party (MHP), and especially with the clampdown that followed the 2016 coup attempt, and with the removal of pro-Kurdish mayors, even this small progress went into reverse. Kurdish cultural organisations have been closed down and signs in the Kurdish language removed. In Diyarbakır, the government-appointed trustees that replaced the elected co-mayors fired the nursery-school teachers on 21 February 2017 – Mother Language Day. Parliamentary minutes and court records still describe Kurdish as an unknown language.
Last week’s news alone illustrates the continuing oppression of those who would use Kurdish.
Kurdish music and theatre are common casualties of this oppression. A week ago last Friday, the performance of a Kurdish adaptation of an American political comedy was banned by Şişli District Governorate (a state body) just hours before it was due to start. This was the third place to ban this production. A concert sung in Zazakî, and planned for International Mother Language day in Bingöl, was cancelled by the Bingöl Governorate on grounds of “security”. Zazakî is related to Kurdish and regarded as threatened with extinction. The musicians have promised to file a lawsuit.
Turkey makes no concessions for older Kurdish speakers who don’t understand Turkish, and this can affect basic rights such as access to healthcare. This week, an elderly woman was stuck for 2½ hours unable to leave Istanbul airport, as there was no one who spoke Kurdish to assist her to reach her son, on the other side of the gate. The son’s videoed complaint was widely shared on social media, and his answer came in the form of a brief detention for “disseminating misleading information and anti-state propaganda”.
In Wan, the authorities attempted to restrict activities for Mother Language Day. The government trustee who replaced the elected mayor banned from the city’s billboards the DEM Party’s posters that called, in Kurdish, for Kurdish to be made an official language and a language of education. And activists were prevented from handing out leaflets on the occasion of their Language Day march.
Deputies who attempted to mark the 21st by saying a few words in their own language in parliament quickly found their microphones switched off. When the Dem Party’s Beritan Güneş Altın was prevented from speaking in Kurdish, she called out the hypocrisy of the ruling AKP whose members use Kurdish when campaigning for votes in Kurdish areas. Burcugül Çubuk, also from the DEM Party, attempted to speak in Uzbek, a Turkic language. From the Republican People’s Party (CHP) Türkan Elçi (widow of shot human rights lawyer, Tahir Elçi) was shut off when she spoke a phrase of Kurdish, and Tahsin Ocaklı was silenced as soon as he switched into Lazuri, after stating “My mother is waiting in front of the television for me to say something in Lazuri. And you will put democracy to shame as you mute this microphone.”
In Turkish prisons
Attacks on their culture are one of the tools used to further punish and oppress Kurdish political prisoners. One such prisoner, Celal Inedi, told Mezopotamya Agency, “A few days ago, they intervened in our radio, saying, ‘You are listening to Kurdish songs, do not turn on Kurdish songs.’… The Kurdish letters we send and receive are confiscated… They claim, ‘there is no translator, that’s why we don’t give them to you.’”
Inedi also reported that prisoners on hunger strike were being held in isolation, that ill prisoners were not getting treatment, and that prisoners who had reached the end of their sentences were still being detained. There were examples of these and similar issues in further reports from other prisons too.
The decision to keep people in prison beyond their stipulated time is made by prison boards, which like to punish prisoners for holding onto their political principles and refusing to repent. Last week Mezopotmaya Agency reported that release was delayed for eleven political prisoners in Ankara Sincan Women’s closed Prison; for cancer patient, Soydan Akay, who has spent the last five years of his thirty-year imprisonment in a solitary cell, and has been denied unsupervised meetings with his lawyer; and for Sinan Sütpak, who was expecting release after thirty years, but has seen this delayed four times for his refusal to “give up his radical thoughts” and to “openly describe the organisation as ‘terrorist organisation’”.
In Iran
In Iran, judicial practices are even more arbitrary, and often hidden, and increasing numbers of prisoners face the death penalty. Although language rights are set out in the Iranian constitution, these are systematically denied, and the teaching of Kurdish can be severely punished. Hengaw Organisation for Human Rights observes that “Over the past year, Kurdish language activists and lecturers have faced intimidation, the fabrication of scenarios, and severe judicial penalties. Several have been arbitrarily detained, stripped of citizenship rights, and imprisoned with severe sentences imposed by Iranian revolutionary courts.” They list eight language teachers who were arrested, and five who were sentenced to imprisonment or suspended imprisonment. Two of these teachers were sentenced twice, and three of the sentences are for ten years.
Kurdish culture more generally is also under attack. After the production of a music video for Welat (Homeland) by Elî Kerîmî, four of the people involved were detained and the studio was sealed off by the Iranian authorities.
In North and East Syria
Turning to North and East Syria: as observed in an article for Mezopotamya Agency, “The Rojava Revolution is also a language revolution.”
In Assad’s Syria, the only accepted language is Arabic. Kurdish is banned from government institutions, schools, universities and the mainstream media, and Kurdish publishing is prohibited. But in North and East Syria, the Autonomous Administration has supported Kurdish culture and developed mother language education in Kurdish, Arabic and Syriac. This has been a huge achievement, however it still suffers from a lack of materials, and a lack of experienced teachers, and also from the unwillingness of some parents to have their children educated in a system that is not recognised in the rest of Syria or elsewhere.
The autonomous region is also preparing the institutions needed to hold municipal elections – planned for the end of April; though the constant threat of attack from Turkey makes any planning difficult.
Following Turkey’s destruction of the region’s infrastructure in January, the Euphrates dam is the only functioning source of electricity, and that is severely limited by Turkey’s holding back of the river water. Fuel must be imported at a high cost, and international help will be needed to repair all the damage.
However, for the present at least, Iran appears to have called for a lull in militia attacks on US bases, so as to avoid further escalating tensions and provoking heavy American reprisals.
The Kurdistan Region of Iraq
In the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, children can be educated in their mother language and both Kurdish and Arabic are state languages. The possibility of mother language education is a basic right and a requirement for freedom, but it gives no guarantee of wider freedoms. In the Kurdistan Region these other freedoms are in danger from a regional politics that is chronically corrupt and run for the benefit of a small group focussed around two elite families. This has resulted in a system that is both increasingly oppressive and dysfunctional. Struggles for political power have brought the region’s government to a halt, allowing Iraq’s federal government to make significant inroads into the region’s hard-won autonomy.
On Wednesday, Iraq’s Federal Court gave rulings on a group of cases concerning the election laws and budget of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). Elections are long overdue, but the two main parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) had failed to agree on the rules under which they would take place. While they bickered, they kept the previous government in place, but, last May, the Federal Court ruled that this had no legal power and all decisions made after the date elections should have been held were void. As a result, there is currently no regional government with the power to activate the regional election commission and hold an election. This week’s rulings stipulated that the next election will therefore be organised from Bagdad.
The Federal Court also ruled that the eleven minority quota seats were unconstitutional and would cease to exist. Although these were intended to give a voice to minority communities, the selection of minority candidates had become dominated by the KDP, in effect giving the KDP a further eleven MPs, much to the annoyance of other parties.
With respect to the budget, which has long been disputed between the KRG and the Federal Government, the court ruled that the KRG must send all oil and non-oil revenue to Bagdad, and that civil servant salaries, pensions and other social payments will be paid by the Federal Government, which will then deduct the money from the region’s budget. Late and missing payments for the large number of people working for, or dependent on, the state have been a cause of hardship and unrest for nearly a decade. In many cities, schools have been unable to open this academic year because of teachers’ strikes. Striking teachers were filmed dancing in celebration at the ruling.
The KRG’s already troubled finances collapsed last March when the International Chamber of Commerce in Paris ruled that oil exports from the Kurdistan Region fell under the control of the Federal Government, and that the export agreement made between Turkey and the KRG was illegal. Turkey refused to pay the compensation demanded by the court, and closed the pipeline to further exports, leaving the KRG needing to borrow from the Federal Government to pay the salaries, and complaining that they were not receiving enough.
At the same time as the region is suffering this humiliating loss of control, the Prime Minister of the KRG, along with other members of Kurdistan’s ruling elite, is being sued in a civil case in a United States court. The serious charges include, “atrocities, indiscriminate violence, arson, murder, attempted murder, genocide, abduction, hostage-taking, kidnapping, torture, collaboration with terrorist organizations, and financial crimes.” Masrour Barzani was summoned on 15 February to appear within three weeks.
Specifically mentioned in the charges is “silencing journalists and political opponents”. Last Saturday, the journalist, Guhdar Zebari, one of the last two Badinan prisoners, was released after over three years in prison for taking part in protests against the government. Journalist Şerwan Şêrwanî is still behind bars. Numerous breaches of human rights have been recorded both in their trial and in their prison conditions. There is still no news of the editor of Roj News Arabic since his detention by the KDP 123 days ago.
In the north of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, Turkey continues their military operations, with the KDP helping them attack the PKK and increase the Turkish foothold in Iraq. On Tuesday, a Turkish drone killed two civilians – retired peshmergas – as they harvested sumac on the mountainside. Community Peacemaker Teams, an NGO working in the region, accuses Turkey of deliberately targeting civilian areas to drive the inhabitants away.
Diplomatic meetings between Turkey and Iraq (including the leader of Iraq’s Popular Mobilisation Forces) and between Turkey and the KRG, and the strengthening of Iraqi border security have led to much speculation about future military action, but nothing is clear.
The rest of the world
Those of us who follow Kurdish news know how difficult it is to make the world aware of what is happening. Now it seems that X, formerly Twitter, is prepared to allow this to be even harder. They have suspended the account of Medya Haber, which produces Kurdish News in Turkish from a studio in Belgium, and also the Kurdish account of Jin News, the women’s news service. The Jin News Instagram account was also previously closed without reason.
A general lack of knowledge about Kurdistan means that when, as yesterday, people talk about what should happen to the British-Bangladeshi ISIS bride – now ISIS widow – Shamima Begum, no one stops to consider what it means to expect the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria to take care of all ISIS prisoners and their families. The current discussion has been triggered by the British Government’s refusal of Begum’s appeal against the withdrawal of her British citizenship. Britain wants to wash their hands of all responsibility and simply leave her in Roj Camp. She becomes the Autonomous Administration’s problem.
This is wrong on an individual level too. When Begum ran away with two schoolfriends to Syria, she was only 15. In other circumstances this would be regarded as a case of the grooming and trafficking of someone who was legally still a child. To make the British Government stance even worse, the trafficking is believed to have been facilitated by a Canadian intelligence agent.
Lack of public knowledge also makes it easier for countries to deport Kurdish asylum seekers back to Turkey. A petition is currently circulating to garner support for Serhat Gültekin, a young Kurdish asylum seeker in France who is threatened with extradition on a bureaucratic technicality, even though this would send him back to a fifteen-year prison sentence for his political activities.
On a more positive French note, France has been celebrating the honouring – by reburial in the Panthéon – of Missak Manouchian, an Armenian Communist fighter in the French Resistance who was executed by the Germans eighty years ago. Manouchian was born in Adıyaman, and when his parents were killed in the Armenian Genocide, he was hidden and saved by a Kurdish family.
I finish with a story of the blossoming of Kurdish culture – in Ireland. On Tuesday, the Guardian published a story about Mohammad Syfkhan, a Kurdish Syrian refugee who has found a place in the Irish folk scene. They describe his music as “a thrilling mix of electrified Kurdish, Arabic and Turkish traditional songs, covers and originals”. His first album is titled “I am Kurdish”.
*Sarah Glynn is a writer and activist – check her website and follow her on Twitter.