TURKEY MUST AMEND 18 LAWS FOR 2ND OFFICIAL LANGUAGE, STUDY FINDS

Today’s Zaman
March 18 2009
Turkey

The Research Center of the Turkish Parliament has conducted a study
into official languages in the parliaments of other countries following
the debates caused by a speech by pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party
(DTP) leader Ahmet Turk, who spoke in Kurdish during part of his
speech at the meeting of his party’s parliamentary group on Feb. 21.

In order to allow the use of any language other than Turkish in Turkey,
Parliament would need to amend its Constitution and 18 laws, the study
found. Many laws including the Political Parties Law, the Election
Law, the Associations Law and the Law on Adoption of Turkish Letters
specify Turkish as the official language and prohibit the use of
other languages.

According to the study, in many countries, including France,
Armenia, Algeria, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Latvia,
it is compulsory to use a single official language. In Algeria and
certain other countries, importing computer equipment, telex and other
printing machines that do not print Arabic letters is banned. India,
Canada, Ireland and Finland use two official languages. Yet, even the
countries that allow the use of two official languages implement strict
restrictions on their use. Canada, it seems, is the most lenient with
the issue of official languages.

In Germany, the constitution and laws do not contain specific
provisions on an official language, and the various dialects of German
are used in parliament for one day each year. Interestingly, the study
does not make any reference to Belgium, in which Dutch, German and
French are recognized as official languages, or to Switzerland, which
accepts German, French, Italian and Romansh as its official languages.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress