A national discussion of "mother tongues"
Güncelleme Tarihi:
Oluşturulma Tarihi: Şubat 26, 2009 00:00
The challenge of developing policy on rights of culture, language and identity is that these issues are too often assumed to be objective. One is a Turk or a Kurd or an Arab; one speaks Azeri, Zazaki or Mhlaso. The reality is something quite different: Sources of culture and identity are highly subjective.
For example, most Azerbaijanis and Turks will say they speak dialects of a common language. But suggest to a Norwegian and a Dane that they speak dialects of something called "Scandinavian" and you’ll have an argument on your heads. Danish and Norwegian, they will say, are languages in and unto themselves.
That Ahmet Türk, the leader of Turkey’s "pro-Kurdish" Democratic Society Party, or DTP, chose "International Mother Language Day" to dramatically deliver a parliamentary speech in Kurdish, demonstrates the false intellectual premises under which this language debate in is proceeding.
First, Türk powerfully illustrated the double standards in the current approach. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has proudly launched Turkey’s first Kurdish-language broadcasting on state television, primarily in the dominant Kurmandji dialect. He has taken several opportunities to utter a few words in Kurdish on public channels. A speech he gave in Diyarbakır Saturday was Ğ until a last-minute turnaround Ğ to have been simultaneously translated into Kurdish. Having been banned from participation in this linguistic spring, Türk’s effective challenge of a "Turkish-only" linguistic policy is quite understandable. "Kurdish is free for the state, but forbidden for the Kurds," he said. Given the current cheap language politicking, it is hard to argue his point.
But this is only the tip of an iceberg-like issue. The larger concern is that this discussion should not devolve into a simplistic, binary "Turkish vs. Kurdish" polemic. For Turkey’s linguistic diversity is as rich as that of its flora and fauna. At the Daily News, for example, we hold our meetings and most of our conversations in Turkish. We write in English. But the "mother tongues" of the staff include several on the list of 15 "endangered languages" in Turkey released yesterday by the United Nations’s Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, or UNESCO.
We acknowledge that state television channels for all languages in Turkey, as now sought by some Laz and Circassian speakers, is an impossibility. We also believe that a Kurdish channel, given the millions of speakers of the language, is correct and even overdue. But between these two brackets of the current debate, there is a complex and comprehensive national conversation that must take place.
The discussion must acknowledge that many in Turkey speak several "mother tongues." It must acknowledge as many as 40 languages, many underlying a synthesis of identity. And it should begin now.
That Ahmet Türk, the leader of Turkey’s "pro-Kurdish" Democratic Society Party, or DTP, chose "International Mother Language Day" to dramatically deliver a parliamentary speech in Kurdish, demonstrates the false intellectual premises under which this language debate in is proceeding.
First, Türk powerfully illustrated the double standards in the current approach. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has proudly launched Turkey’s first Kurdish-language broadcasting on state television, primarily in the dominant Kurmandji dialect. He has taken several opportunities to utter a few words in Kurdish on public channels. A speech he gave in Diyarbakır Saturday was Ğ until a last-minute turnaround Ğ to have been simultaneously translated into Kurdish. Having been banned from participation in this linguistic spring, Türk’s effective challenge of a "Turkish-only" linguistic policy is quite understandable. "Kurdish is free for the state, but forbidden for the Kurds," he said. Given the current cheap language politicking, it is hard to argue his point.
But this is only the tip of an iceberg-like issue. The larger concern is that this discussion should not devolve into a simplistic, binary "Turkish vs. Kurdish" polemic. For Turkey’s linguistic diversity is as rich as that of its flora and fauna. At the Daily News, for example, we hold our meetings and most of our conversations in Turkish. We write in English. But the "mother tongues" of the staff include several on the list of 15 "endangered languages" in Turkey released yesterday by the United Nations’s Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, or UNESCO.
We acknowledge that state television channels for all languages in Turkey, as now sought by some Laz and Circassian speakers, is an impossibility. We also believe that a Kurdish channel, given the millions of speakers of the language, is correct and even overdue. But between these two brackets of the current debate, there is a complex and comprehensive national conversation that must take place.
The discussion must acknowledge that many in Turkey speak several "mother tongues." It must acknowledge as many as 40 languages, many underlying a synthesis of identity. And it should begin now.