Speaking Kurdish in the Turkish Parliament

Right away, with no surprise, hell broke loose. The media reported the "incident" as breaking news. TRT 3, the official TV channel that airs Parliament meetings, stopped its live broadcast. Parliament Speaker Köksal Toptan noted that it was against the Constitution to use any language other than Turkish at Parliament. And opposition leaders bashed not just Ahmet Türk, but also the government, which they saw as a collaborator of the pro-Kurdish cause.

Two peoples?

In the media, yesterday’s commentaries were quite divided on this issue. Liberals such as Cengiz Çandar or Oral Çalışlar were arguing that Ahmet Türk did a good job by breaking yet another taboo. Other columnists, who are typically concerned about the "foundations of the regime," sounded much more critical. According to Fikret Bila of daily Milliyet, Ahmet Türk’s speech clearly proved that he and his party were dedicated to creating "two peoples" in Turkey Ñ one Turkish, one Kurdish. This was a lethal threat to the country, Bila added, which could not be tolerated.

I tend to be closer to the former, i.e., the liberal view. Parliamentarians are representatives of the people, not the officials of "the regime." It is natural for them to represent the identities of the people which have voted for them. And every identity in Turkey should have the right to be represented at Parliament.

But this idea is not that welcome in Turkey. That’s why undesirable identities have been purged from the Parliament at times. Besides the military coups, during which this was done collectively, there have been two dramatic cases in the 90s. In the first one, in 1994, a group of Kurdish MPs (which included the famous and controversial Leyla Zana) who tried to take their oaths in Kurdish were deprived of their seats and then put in prison. In 1999, this time the newly elected Merve Kavakçı dared to walk into the Parliament with her headscarf. Hundreds of secularist MPs yelled at her, protested her presence, and finally she was pushed away from the Parliament not just literally but also legally. Soon she even lost her citizenship.

Here is the lesson: There are two symbols that our anxious republic can’t stand seeing in the "public square" Ñ the Kurdish language and the Islamic headscarf. And if elected politicians dare to bring them into the parliament, they will face strong reactions. As time goes by, and as Turkey gets a little less illiberal, the dose of these reactions comes down. That’s why Ahmet Türk won’t be crucified for speaking Kurdish in Parliament, whereas that would have been the case 10 years ago. But the reactionist forces are still out there, and no one can guarantee that they are not planning a total strike back.

Since I am not the greatest fan of those reactionist forces, and their authoritarian republic, I tend to be lenient on Ahmet Türk’s symbolic move. But this doesn’t mean that Kurdish nationalism is not a dangerous tendency which can indeed tear Turkey apart. And while supporting the Kurds’ right to uphold their language and culture, we have the right be concerned by the fierce chauvinism that resonates among some of them.

A crucial question

Here is the crucial question for Turkey’s Kurds: Are they only hoping to become happy citizens of a democratic Turkey which respects their civil liberties? Or are they convinced that they are a totally separate "people" from the Turks, who need to have a separate homeland? If the latter is true, and if manifestations of Kurdish identity are designed to cultivate this "national consciousness," then we are in trouble. Then Turkey might be destined to a tragic ethnic conflict, whose horrific results can be foreseen by looking at the collapse of Yugoslavia or the partition of India and Pakistan.

The trouble with Ahmet Türk’s party, the DTP, is that it doesn’t convince the rest of us that its long-term goal is not the creation of an independent Kurdish nation. Once that fear is in the air, even the reforms that will give them the civil liberties that they deserve are stalled. Some part of that fear might be stemming from the usual paranoia of our nationalist/republican establishment, but that is not the whole problem. If he wants to help solve the problem, Mr. Türk needs to take other steps as well. Perhaps the next time he speaks in Kurdish, he can touch upon the evils of ethnic nationalism and the art of co-existence. That would be a speech that I would cheerfully applaud.