A group of young Kurdish workers in Bodrum, a tourist town in southern Turkey, have resigned from their jobs after their employer banned them from speaking Kurdish while at work, as reported by Ahmet Kanbal of Mezopotamya Agency on Saturday. The workers, who had travelled from Nusaybin (Nisêbîn) in Mardin (Mêrdîn) to work in the tourism industry, were employed by Axis Mundi Travel, a subcontractor providing transport services at a local hotel.
Despite the ban, the workers continued speaking Kurdish among themselves, leading to further warnings from the company. In a message sent to the employees via WhatsApp, one of the company’s managers, identified only as I.K., stated, “This is not a political arena. So I don’t consider a person’s religion (atheist, etc.), language (Kurdish, Turkish, Laz), or ethnicity when I take them on. However, during working hours, […] everyone must speak only Turkish. Outside working hours, you may do as you please. (No ethnic music is to be played in the vehicles.) I ask everyone to comply with this. Just do your job.”
In response to this, 12 Kurdish workers chose to leave their jobs and return to their home town. They allege that they were not fully compensated for their work, with deductions made from their final payments due to their abrupt resignation. The workers now plan to lodge a complaint against the company.
University student Mehmet Aslan, one of the former employees, explained, “They kept telling us not to speak Kurdish. Even when we sang songs in Kurdish, they objected. They didn’t want us to speak Kurdish even after working hours. When we said it was our language and asked why we couldn’t speak it, they told us it was forbidden. After the WhatsApp message, we had a face-to-face meeting with them. They told us that speaking any language other than Turkish was forbidden. When we asked if English or Spanish were banned too, they told us that Kurdish was forbidden. When they said ‘Don’t speak Kurdish, it’s banned’ the 12 of us left the job.”
Aslan further expressed his frustration, stating, “They banned our language and didn’t pay us what we were owed. We will seek justice for this. This is our language and we will continue to speak it. Why is it they have the right to speak their mother tongue, but we don’t have the right to speak ours?”
Another worker, Kani İlhan, said that although the company knew they were leaving, they claimed they had left without notice, and used this as a justification for the reduced payments. “They knew we were leaving, but reported to their headquarters that they didn’t. We spoke with human resources about the missing payments, but they didn’t listen to us. We will take legal action against them,” he said.
