World Peace Herald, DC
July 20 2005
Turkish Kurds now spell freedom
By Seth Rosen
The Washington Times
Published July 20, 2005
DIYARBAKIR, Turkey — Sitting attentively in the front row of a
small, pink classroom, Hasbey Koksal, a primary school teacher,
learns how to conjugate verbs in his mother tongue.
“I see. I saw. He sees. He saw,” he repeats emphatically with the
rest of the class of 20, half of them older than 40, learning Kurdish
vocabulary and grammar at a new private school on the outskirts of
this sprawling city in southeast Turkey.
“We’re rediscovering ourselves and our culture,” said Mr. Koksal,
47, who learned Kurdish as a child but lacked the grammar skills to
understand literature or poetry. “It’s like being an adolescent
again.”
To the students at the academy, this simple lesson was
unimaginable just a few years ago.
From 1984 to 1999 the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a guerrilla
group, fought for independence in a conflict that claimed an
estimated 37,000 lives and displaced millions.
-Language banned-
The Turkish government banned the speaking of Kurdish dialects,
and violators risked harassment and prosecution. The only way to
study Kurdish was to attend clandestine schools in the basements of
homes.
To improve its prospects of joining the European Union, Turkish
parliament enacted reforms in 2002 allowing state-run Kurdish
television and radio broadcasts and permitting private language
courses.
Although the measures carried symbolic weight, Kurds said, they
were enacted solely to placate the European Union and did not change
official repression of cultural rights. “To teach in a classroom is a
dream come true,” said Sakir Ozeydin, an instructor at the school in
Diyarbakir. “But this institution is not going to solve the Kurdish
language problem.”
The private school, which opened in September 2004, was one of
six in Turkey offering 10-week beginner, intermediate and advanced
courses in Kurdish, and 130 of its students have completed one of
them.
“If someone tells you not to use your language, it’s like them
telling you not to use your legs. It makes you disabled,” Yakup
Yilmaz, 25, said during a tea break at the school. “They cut off my
legs and I’m here to get them back.”
-A cultural renaissance-
There is talk in this city among the hills of Mesopotamia and on
the banks of the Tigris River of a cultural and linguistic
renaissance.
Shops along Diyarbakir’s boulevards blare Kurdish music and
prominently offer Kurdish films. It is now much easier for parents to
register Kurdish names for their children, though they are prohibited
from using the letters Q, W and X, which don’t exist in the Turkish
alphabet.
The Tigris and Euphrates Culture and Arts Center, which opened
two years ago, orchestrates Kurdish plays and concerts and offers
classes in vocal training, cinema and guitar. “Before this center
opened, people forgot the details of Kurdish culture,” said music
teacher Adnan Sevik. “We are trying to revive it.”
On a steamy Friday afternoon in May, old men sat in the courtyard
drinking tea and watching a dance lesson incorporating traditional
Kurdish motifs and modern routines. They all tell harrowing tales of
police intimidation and imprisonment. Kadir Dogan said police once
broke his fingers for playing Kurdish music on his flute.
-Center closely watched-
Local authorities monitor the center closely. The managers must
inform police of who will sing what songs at their concerts. Twice,
authorities have searched the premises. Cases are pending against the
arts center for having banned books and attempting to turn a profit
by selling tea, Mr. Sevik said.
In the mid-1990s, radio stations were allowed to broadcast
Kurdish music as long as the lyrics contained no political material.
If Kurds wanted to watch television in Kurdish, they had to turn to
European satellite channels.
In June last year, state-run Turkish Radio and Television began
airing a 30-minute news program in different languages each weekday.
“Our Cultural Wealth” is broadcast in Kirmanci and Zaza Kurdish two
days a week and in Bosnian, Arabic and Circassian on the others.
-Broadcasts criticized-
Many Kurds criticize the program, which sometimes shows week-old
news, as a token gesture for the European Union.
Cemal Dogan, Gun TV’s director, said it is imperative that local
channels air news and health programs, because many older residents
speak little Turkish. Gun TV applied to the Radio and Television High
Council (RTUK) for a license in March 2004, and six other regional
channels have followed suit, but none has received a yes or no.
RTUK demanded a viewer profile survey, which was conducted by the
Diyarbakir governor’s office and a local university, but it was
deemed inadequate because it did not give the number of speakers of
the region’s languages and dialects, said Sebnem Bilget, an RTUK
spokeswoman. A state institute for statistics is supposed to carry
out another survey, but she did not know whether it had begun.
-Station suspended-
“The real mentality of the state is shown in our application
process,” said Mr. Dogan, whose station had its license suspended for
a month in September for broadcasting a live municipal meeting where
two members unexpectedly spoke Kurdish.
Most Diyarbakir residents praise the European Union, which is to
begin the formal negotiation process with Turkey in October, for
raising the state’s treatment of its Kurds as an issue and for
pressing the government to change its policies. The changes are
compulsory to meet the Copenhagen criteria, a necessity for EU
membership that includes “respect for and protection of minorities.”
“There have been changes in legislation but we would like to see
that they are properly implemented and then become broader,” said
European Commission Enlargement spokeswoman Krisztina Nagy. “What is
important to us now is observing that these cultural rights are
respected.”
A pervasive sentiment among Kurds is that reforms are cosmetic
and that the government’s attitude has not changed.
“They are done only for the EU, so that the state can say, ‘Look
we are allowing Kurdish to be spoken,’ ” said Celil, a 23-year-old
law student who until recently taught Kurdish classes secretly twice
a week. “Turkey treats these reforms like ‘homework.’ They should be
doing them for their own people, not because the EU asked for it.”
-‘Recognized’ minorities-
It is still illegal to use Kurdish in the public domain or at
government sites or functions. Offices of the pro-Kurdish Democratic
People’s Party (DEHAP) are raided routinely and several high profile
members have been arrested and tried for inciting separatism.
In Turkey, the only recognized minorities — spelled out in the
1923 Lausanne Treaty that created the Turkish Republic — are Jews,
Greeks and Armenians. The roughly 14 million Kurds, one-fifth of
Turkey’s population, do not have constitutionally guaranteed rights.
“We will give our Kurdish brothers and sisters individual rights,
but will never accept that those individual rights will become group
or political rights,” said Emine Sirin, an independent member of
parliament.
Learning Kurdish in state schools is out of the question because
the Turkish language is a symbol of national unity, said Onur Oymen,
a member of parliament from the opposition Republican People’s Party.
-EU attention faulted-
Many politicians and ordinary citizens are frustrated by what
they perceive as inequitable attention lavished on the Kurds in the
southeast by the European Union and human-rights activists.
Turkey has many other ethnic groups, but the European Union
focuses only on the Kurdish situation, said Mr. Oymen. “Excessive
protection of one ethnic group is racist,” he said.
After a five-year cease-fire brokered following the arrest of PKK
leader Abdullah Ocalan, the PKK resumed attacks in June 2004 and
clashes with government forces are rising in frequency and intensity.
The group bombed a train in southeastern Turkey this month, killing
five persons. A separate organization, the Kurdish Freedom Falcons,
took responsibility for a bomb blast Saturday at a resort on the
Aegean coast that killed five persons including two foreign tourists.
-Outside pressure felt-
What the military and government fear is not the armed struggle,
but the unarmed struggle for Kurdish independence through pressure
from the European Union and nongovernmental organizations, said Burak
Bekdil, a political commentator.
Government officials spoke of their concern that the call for
political and cultural rights is just a screen for greater autonomy
and, eventually, an independent Kurdistan. “DEHAP thinks that by
using the EU, they can carve up Turkey and have an independent
state,” said Mr. Sirin.
During the tea break at the private language school, there is no
talk of separation or rebellion. The heated discussion focuses on the
cost of tuition, roughly $75 a month and more than most can afford.
Seventy percent of the students are unemployed, estimated Suleyman
Yilmaz, the school’s director.
Most people would rather just continue learning from their
parents or meet in neighbors’ homes, said Mr. Ozeydin, the teacher.
The government is using this low turnout to create an image that no
one wants to learn Kurdish and as a justification for not extending
Kurdish cultural rights, he added.
“Why should we have to pay to learn our mother tongue?” Mr.
Ozeydin asked.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress