A cafe in Turkey’s largest Kurdish-majority city of Diyarbakır (Amed), which made the decision to deal with customers in the Kurdish language, has been raided by police, in the latest instance of repression of the minority language spoken by tens of millions throughout the Middle East.
Owner Ramazan Şimşek was detained by police, after making a social media announcement stating that his establishment would only deal with customers in Kurdish, the majority language in Turkey’s south-east. Speaking to press prior to his arrest, Şimşek said: “Welcoming customers, taking orders and further communications are all conducted in Kurdish.”
He represented the project as an opportunity for members of Turkey’s diverse communities to learn from one another, saying: “People who don’t speak Kurdish come to our cafe too. They express their wishes in the languages they know, but we answer in Kurdish. Those who don’t speak Kurdish can come to our cafe. We say: Let them come and learn Kurdish!”
However, his announcement prompted outcry from nationalist Turks on social media, who represented the project as a cafe where the speaking of Turkish was ‘banned’.
Şimşek’s announcement and subsequent arrest came in the aftermath of Kurdish Language Day, dedicated to the promotion and protection of a language which continues to face formal and informal discrimination and prejudice. The 15th of May has been commemorated as Kurdish Language Day since 2006.
Former Chair of the Diyarbakır Bar Association and human rights advocate Mehmet Emin Aktar, himself the subject of prosecution in Turkey, was among those to share a message of support via the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter. “In which law is this crime defined – or is there even such a crime?” he asked, referring to the cited offence of ‘operating a cafe in the Kurdish language’. “So why the raid, and detention? What they mean is, ‘You cannot provide services or even speak Kurdish without our permission.’”
