In a recent survey, Turkey’s Institute of Statistics (TÜİK) classified all publications in minority languages, the Kurdish weekly Xwebûn reported on Monday.
The institution produced a questionnaire for a recent study on print media, which ignored all languages except Turkish when asking outlets their language of publication.
Kadri Esen, the Xwebûn newspaper’s licencee, called TÜİK officials after noticing while filling in a questionnaire that the only options included were “in Turkish”, “in a foreign language” and “in Turkish or a foreign Language”.
“You want to collect information from a newspaper that publishes in Kurdish, but you do not have Kurdish as an option,” Xwebûn quoted Esen as saying to statistical institute’s employees, who responded by telling him to put politics aside.
“This is nothing to do with politics” Esen replied. “We broadcast in our own language in Kurdistan. You are denying this language,” he added.
The TÜİK employee insisted that Esen choose the “foreign language” option for Kurdish.
Copies of Xwebûn, the only Kurdish-language newspaper distributing within Turkey, have frequently been seized by the Turkish police.
Kurdish is the dominant language in southeastern Turkey, it is spoken by an estimated 12% of the population, and by around 75% of people in eight cities in Turkey, according to scholarly research.
Kurdish is not be the only language being spoken in Turkey to be excluded in the TÜİK’s questionnaire. The Agos newspaper publishes in both Armenian and Turkish, while Apoyevmatini has been reaching out to its readers in Greek for 98 years.
