Linguistic Human RightsOvercoming Linguistic Discrimination

Killing a mother tongue - how the Kurds aredeprived of linguistic human rights

Tove Skutnabb-Kangas - Sertar Bucak

In troduc[ion

Edited byTove Skutnabb-KangasRobert Phillipson

in collaboration withMart Rannut

Mouton de GruyterBerlin New York 1994

We will start with a short description of how it is to grow up as a Kurdin the Turkish part of Kurdistan. The extracts come from the testimonyof Esref Okumus to the Conference on Minority Rights, Policies andPractice in South-East Europe, Copenhagen, March 30th-April 1st 1990,organised by The Danish Helsinki Committee and The Minority RightsGroup, London. Esref Okumus is a Kurdish journalist in his early thirties,now working in Sweden:

As a Kurd in Turkey you are born in a village or a town the nameof which is not valid, because names of nearly all Kurdish villagesand towns I know are today changed into Turkish. 1[f your parents wish to give: you a Kurdish name, your name willnot be registered by the authorities. It will be changed into Turkish.If your parents still insist to keep your Kurdi!;h name, they will beprosecuted and forced by a court to change your name into a non-Kurdish name. 2

When you, seven years old, go to school, you won't be able tocommunicate with your teachers. At least if you, just like me, haveparents who do not speak Turkish. It will take 4 or 5 years beforeyou at all can speak with your teachers . .\When you have become an adult, you must be aware of all the lawswhich prevent you from keeping your Kurdish identity.First of all, you are not allowed to claim that your mother tongueis Kurdish. The third section of law no. 2932 tells you what yourmother tongue is: 'The mother tongue of Turkish citizens is Turkish.'You are not allowed to speak Kurdish in public places (citationsfrom law no. 2932) ... If you, in spite of all this, speak Kurdish,you can be sentenced to a maximum of 2 years of imprisonmentaccording to section 4 of the same law.

341\ Til\'~ S/;Ii!IIUhh-AulIgU\ S/,I'/(/\ !JIII'U/;

(quotations from laws prohibiting all forms of expression inKurdish) , .. All this means that you, as a member of the Kurdishminority in Turkey, are deprived of all fruits of your culture. [ wantto emphasize this: ALL fruits of your culture. If you don't want toaccept this, and clearly show your disapproval by, for instance,w:iting to a newspaper, then you can be prosecuted for 'weakeningof natIOnal feelings', according to section 143 of the Penal Code,You can be sentenced to a maximum of 10 years of imprisonment.[I' you, as a Kurd in Turkey, 'build or attempt to build an associ-ation' to maintain your culture and language, you can be sentencedto a maximum of 15 years of imprisonment, according to section14101' the Penal Code.

Thousands of Kurds have been sentenced according to these laws.If you try to explain this situation abroad, exactly as I am doingat thIS moment, you can be sentenced to 10 years of imprisonmentfor 'damaging the reputation of the Turkish state'.4

Serta

350 Till'(' Slwlllohh- KOllgo" Serlo(' 8um/.:

Sorani (south Kurmandji, South Kurdish, sometimes also called mid-dle Kurdish), spoken in the southern parts of Iranian and IraqIKurdistan,

Some linguists also classify southeastern dialects (Sinei, Kirmansahi.Leki) as a distinct variety. In addition, speakers of some central Iranian(grouped together as Zaza and Gurani) and southwest Iranian (e.g. Luri)varieties, also claim Kurdish ethnic and linguistic identity. These varietiesare not easily mutually intelligible with Kurmanci and Sorani, but speak-ers of Zaza and Gurani learn Kurmanci very easily, whereas the oppositeis not true (e.g. van Bruinessen 1978: 30). There are no strict dialectboundaries: the dialects merge gradually (for details, see Hassanpour1989).

Most Kurdish literary critics consider Kurdish art poetry to havestarted with Baba Tahir Hamadani (935--1010) (Shakely 1989: 51), butthe oldest Kurdish literary text, Pir Sa/yar's wisdom, dates from theperiod before the islamization of Kurdistan. Orature (oral literature) hasalways played an important part in the development of the Kurdishlanguage, partly because of the oppression of Kurdish literature. ManyKurdish poets and historians have also written in other languages fromthe 1200s onwards. The Kurdish national epic, Mem u Zin, written in1694 by Ekhmede Khani (Ahmed-i-Xani), is partly based on an old folktale, Meme Alan. It combines a beautifully told romantic-tragic lovestory with Kurdish longing and struggle for liberation, a frequent Kurdishcombination.

Much Kurdish literature, both old and new, has as one of its centralthemes the struggle against oppression (e.g. Fuad 1988: 22). For instance,the great Kurdish poet Cegerxwin (The Bleeding Heart; pseudonym forHasan Sheikmous) follows this theme, from poems about the Kurdishsmith Kewa who slew the child-brain-eating tyrant (Iranian king Ejdehak!Zuhak) and liberated the Kurdish people, (still celebrated on March 21,Newroz, the Kurdish national day) to poems on international solidarityand the fight against colonialism (e.g. the poem Heval Pol RobsonlComrade Paul Robeson). (Cegerxwin's publisher agall1 faces a sentencefor some of the poems - see note 11). Also Kurdish newspapers (thefirst, Kurd/stan, in 1898 in Cairo) and magazines (e.g. lin 1918-19) bearwitness to the need to strengthen Kurdish resistance.

11,," II/(' Kurds ore del'I'/I'e" "I 1/llg/.llsl/I 11U1I10I1 1'11'11/,\ 351

The Kurdish language community - divided, dispersed and

oppressed

The Kurdish language community differs from many others in severalrespects which, taken together, have restricted a more "normal" devel-opment of the language. The Kurds have been and are still divided,

dispersed and oppressed.Firstly, the Kurdish language community is divided and dispersed.

Kurds are subjected to colonial rule in four states, Turkey, Iran, Iraq andSyria. Hundreds of thousands of Kurds have been deported

6or more or

less forced to move from Kurdistan to other parts of the occupying states

or to other countries.Thus it has been and is difficult for the Kurds to develop their language

in a way which is normal in closely-knit non-di:,persed language com-munities. This has resulted, among other things, in the fact that writtenKurdish today uses three different alphabets and there are at least three

centres for the development of a standard variety. The Bedir-Xan variety(Bedir-Xan - Lescot 1970) (or HAWAR-variety), introduced in 1932 inDamascus and Beirut by Celadet Ali Bedir-Xan in the magazine Hawar,based on Kurmanci (mainly as spoken in the south-eastern parts ofTurkish Kurdistan), uses the Latin alphabet. The Sulemaniye variety, thestandard language of the Kurds in Iraqi Kurdistan, based on the Soranivariety of Kurdish, uses a modified variety of the Arab-Persian script(and the Arabic script was also used in Turkish Kurdistan until 1928--1929). Standard Kurdish in the former USSR, based on Kurmanci asspoken in the southern parts of Armenia, uses the Cyrillic alphabet, butthe Latin alphabet was used for Kurdish in the USSR until the late 1930s.

Geographical dispersion and the many changes in script type have, inaddition to the oppression of the language itself and the denial ofeducation to Kurds in general and specifically of instruction in Kurdish,made much Kurdish written literature inaccessibk to most of the Kurdsthemselves. Mehmet Emin Bozarslan is the author of both the firstKurdish primer in Turkey, A/(abe (which was banned and led to hisimprisonment in Turkey) and numerous children's books. He is teachinghis compatriots literacy in exile (despite threats from the Turkish Embassyin Denmark - see Skutnabb·-Kangas 1989a: 279-280) while rescuing,transcribing, translating and writing comments on some of the old liter-ature (e.g. Kurd/stan, lin, Mem u Zin), all this virtually without financialsupport. This shows vividly some of the difficulties in Kurdish literary

352 Tove Skutl7aM-Kal7gas Serlal' Bueak

work. Very few Kurds in the world would be able to read what has beenpublished even during this century in Kurdish, even if there were noprohibitions. Few literate language communities in the world face suchcumulative difficulties.

Therefore, the Kurdish vocabulary has also evolved in different direc-tions in different parts of Kurdistan, The Kurdish language is not relatedto the dominant majority language of 3 of the 4 occupying states, AsKurds are obliged to operate for many official purposes in the dominantofficial languages (which are very different from their mother tongue),despi te (often) Iimi ted proficiency in them, there is widespread borrowi ngfro l1l them .into Kurdish. This complicates the mutual intercomprehen-slbJllty of different varieties of Kurdish.

The Kurdish language has been oppressed in most occupying countries,most severely in Turkey, as will be described later. The oppression hasmade the development of the Kurdish language extremely difficult.

The majority of Kurds in Iran, Syria and Turkey are consideredilliterate in their native tongue. In these countries official policy hasprevented the autonomous development of a literary variety bydenymg Kurds education in their own language as well as the rightto distribute printed material in Kurdish. Linguistic and literaryprojects have thus been restricted to clandestine activities of op-positional movements" (Matras 1990: 1).

Most of the recent development of Kurdish as a literary language hastaken place during the few periods of relative freedom 7 in Iraq and tosome extent Syria, but particularly in the former Soviet Union. To anincreasing degree this work is being undertaken by Kurds in exile. Suchwork is made more difficult by the fact that the ban on Kurdish is alsotransferred to other countries: there is no teaching in or through Kurdishin most western European countries where Kurds live as migrants orrefugees. While most other migrants can get help from the embassies oftheir countries of origin in upholding their language and culture, Kurdsare actively prevented by theirs from maintaining and developing theIrlanguage (see again note 2 for naming practices).

Together these facts make the situation of the Kurdish languagecommunity different from that of others. No other literate languagecommunities in the world are today forced to maintain and develop theirlanguage under equally oppressive and difficult circumstances, withoutlinguistic human rights. Because of geographical dispersion and politicaldivision between several states (something that Kurdish shares with many

HoI\' the Kurds are deprived 01 lingUIstic humwl rights 353

other languages in the world) and the severe cultural-political oppression,which includes the most brutal linguistic oppression in the world enactedwith the force of law, the Kurdish language has had extremely difficult

conditions for its development.Despite the repression, Kurdish is a fully-fledged language, ready to

take its place among official state: languages in the world. When enoughresources are devoted to the development of the Kurdish language,Kurdish can relatively rapidly be: developed into a language which canfulfill all modern needs in educat.ion, (see Muttersprache Kurdisch 1980;Meyer-Ingwersen 1989) administration, etc (see Hassanpour 1989). "De-spite irregularities, inconsistencies and variation there is no doubt aboutthe fact that a literary variety of the Kurdish language exists and is usedm publications to express a wide range of subjects", Yaron Mat.rasconcludes in his study of Kurdish orthography (Matras 1990: 8).

The legal situation of the Kurdish language in Turkey is inviolation of universal and European agreements

A history oj' oppression

This is how the Bremen Declaration on Human Rights in Kurdistan,adopted at an international conference in April 1989, described the

situation of the Kurds in Turkey:

Kurdish children (in Turkey) have no right to education and trainingin their mother tongue. Use of the Kurdish language is forbiddenby law. Any publication in the Kurdish language, the production,sale and playing of Kurdish music, and the celebration of nationaland traditional festivals have been declared to be crimes. TheTurkish government has replaced Kurdish place names and geo-graphical names with Turkish ones. Kurds are imprisoned andsentenced for crimes of conscience (Human Rights in Kurdistan 1989:

231).

Although oppression of the Kurdish language has been Turkish policysInce the time of Ataturk, and was enshrined in the Constitution of 1923,this oppression has been intensified in recent years in a number of newlaws. The deprivation of linguistic human rights in Turkish Kurdistanhas been formalised in the Turkish Constitution of 1982 and in several

recent laws.

.'154 /i)l'" s!!>-Kilugils Seuile lJueil/i

We shall relate the relevant Turkish constitutional and legal enactmentsto international covenants some of which Turkey is a signatory to, andto those European covenants and regulations that Turkey, as a memberof Council of Europe and an aspiring member of the European Com-munity, should conform to. It is also significant that Turkey has NOTsigned some of the most eentral human rights instruments, for instancethe International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of RacialDiscrimination, ratified or acceded to by 128 countries (1991) and TheInternational Covenants on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (100countries) or Civil and Political Rights (93 countries; see UN HumanRights Fact Sheets 12,15 and 16).

Prior to that it is important to stress that the Turkish Constitutionand the Laws quoted are in clear defiance of the Treaty of Lausanne(July 21, 1923), part of which - Section III Concerning Protection ofMinorities - deals specifically with Turkey. In Article 37 of the Treatyof Lausanne,

"Turkey undertakes that the stipulations contained in Articles 38to 44 shall be recognised as fundamental laws, and that no law, noregulation, nor official action shall conflict or interfere with thesestipulations, nor shall any law, regulation, nor official action prevailover them",

Most of the Treaty deals with what are referred to as "non-Moslemminorities" (and most Kurds are Muslims), but Article 39 states clearlythat "No restriction shall be imposed on the free use by any Turkishnational of any language in private intercourse, in commerce, religion.111 the press or in publications of any kind or at public meetings."Likewise, article 39 states that "Notwithstanding the existence of theofficial language, adequate facilities shall be given to Turkish nationalsof non-Turkish speech for the oral use of their own language before theCourts". As will be seen in the Extracts below, Turkey violates in itsConstitution and other laws the linguistic rights which it has itself spe-CIfically guaranteed in the Treaty of Lausanne.

We shall refer to three categories of laws in what follows. Firstly weshall refer to laws which are in force and have been so since theirpromulgation in the early 1980s, most importantly the Turkish ConstI-tution of 1982, and the Turkish Penal Code. Secondly, we shall refer tolaws which were in force until April 12 1991, but which were annulledthen (Law No. 2932 of October 22 1983 on Publications in LanguagesOther Than Turkish; Law No. 2820 of 22 April 1983 on Political Parties;

1/1111 ,I", KUfds ill''' d"lm,'"d "111/I.~IIISI!( fIUl//WI "'1'111., .i))

and several paragraphs (140,141.142 and 163) in the Pe~al Code). Andthirdly, we shall refer to the Law to Fight TerrOrISm of 12 Apnl 1991(Law No. 3713), a law which recapitulates most of the prohibItions onthe use of Kurdish in the earlier, annulled laws, but often in a morecovert form,x It might be important to explain that the somewhat crypticformulation, defining what "languages prohibited by law" are, namely"languages other than those which are the primary official languages ofstates recognized by the Turkish State" (Law 2932/2 and other laws) ISformulated thus so as to avoid referring explicitly to the Kurdish language,an act which itself was prohibited by law (section 81 of Law No. 2820_ see below). Kurdish is a secondary official language in Iraq, hence the

circumlocution.Under the laws annulled in 1991 thousands of Kurds were imprisoned,

killed and tortured (see e.g. Helsinki Watch Updale 1990; Human Rightsin Kurdistan 1989, 1990). Most of the prohibi tions a re still in force throughlaw 3713, but in a more covert form. The only ban on the Kurdishlanguage which has been lifted is that on privatE: use, provided it doesnot fall under the other paragraphs. Thus Kurds are now allowed tospeak Kurdish in their homes and sing Kurdish love songs in their gardens,but if a Kurdish child complains to a parent in a private garden, whilepICking beans, about not being allowed to speak Kurdish during the

breaks in school, this act is still a terrorist crime. ~

Samples of Turkish law restricting Kurdish

Still in/orce:

The state of Turkey IS In its state territory and state citizens anindivisible whole. Its language is Turkish. (Constitution, Article 3).Everyone bound to the Turkish state through the bond of citizenship

is a Turk. (Constitution, Article 66, Paragraph 1).No language prohibited by law may be used for disclosure orpublication of ideas and opinions. Written or pnnted matenals,records, tapes, videotapes as well as other means of expreSSIOn thatare in violation of this prohibition will be confiscated .. , (ConstI-

tution, Article 26/3).No publications or broadcasts may be made in any language pro-

hibited by law. (Constitution, Article 28/2).No language other than Turkish may be taught as.a native l~ng~ageto citizens of Turkey in instructional and educatIOnal instItutIOns.

(Constitution, Article 42/9).

356 rove SkU{l1uhh.Kutigus -- Serru\, Bucuk

Annulled J2 April 1991:

The mother tongue of Turkish citizens is Turkish. (Law 2932/3)It IS prohibIted to dIsclose, publish or broadcast ideas and opinionsIn languages other than those which are the primary official lan-guages of states recognized by the Turkish State." (Law 2932/2).Section 3/b of the same law specified that this also includes postersrecords, films and tapes. "

~rticle 1.42/3 of the Turkish Penal Code prohibited the dissemination ofsepara,:lst propaganda", and Article 143 "the weakening of national

feelIngs .

Section 81 of Law No. 2820 on Political Parties (22 April 1983) stated:

It is forbidden to claim that there exist minorities in Turkey It '.forbidden to protect or develop non-Turkish Cultures and lang~age:s

The new Law to Fight TerrOrism (3713), In force Since 12 April 199 Jdefines In ItS Article 1 terrorism as follows:

Terrorism is any kind 0.1' action conducted by one or several personsbelongI.ng to an organIZatIOn with the aim of changing the char-acte,nstlcs of the Republic as specified in the Constitution, its po-IItlcal,. legal,. SOCial, secular and economic system, damaging theindiVISible Unity of the State .with its territory and nation, endangeringthe eXistence of the Turkish State and Republic, weakening ordestroymg or SeIZl?g the authority oj'the State, eliminating funda-mental nghts and freedoms, or damaging the internal and externalsecunty of the State, public order or general health by anyonemethod of pressure, force, violence, terrorization, intimidation, op-pression or threat.

An organization as described in this Law is constituted by two or morepeople gathering under a common aim.

We have emphasized some of the formUlations which can be used toprosecute a person who claims linguistic human rights. Most politicalpartIes In democratIc countnes could also be considered terrorist organ-IzatIOns according to this definition.

Article 2 defines Terrorist Criminals:

A member of an organization, founded to attain the aims definedIn Article 1, who commits a crime in accordance with these aimsmdlvldually or with others or a member of such an organization,

!lOll' rhe Kurds un! depr,,'ed oj liligliislic hU!Ilull rlg/II.I J.J I

though not committing the intended crime, i:, called a terroristcriminal.Those who are not members of the terrorist organization, butcommit a crime in the name of the organization count as terroristcriminals and are punished like members of the: organization."

Articles 3 and 4 define what Terrorist Crimes and Crimes Committed forTerrorist Purposes are. lo Article 8, Propaganda against the indivisibleunity of the State, stipulates

Written and oral propaganda and assemblies, meetings and dem-onstrations aiming at damaging the indivisible unity of the State ofthe Turkish Republic with its territory and nation are forbidden,regardless oj'the method, intention and ideas behind it. Those con-ducting such an activity are to be punished by a sentence of between2 and 5 years' imprisonment and a fine of between 50 million and100 million Turkish pounds. (our emphasis)

For reasons of space, we cannot quote the Articles from the PenalCode which define terrorist crimes, but we wi]] only give two recentexamples (for more see note 11; for further information see Besikci 1989- a Turkish sociologist who himself has again been imprisoned onaccusations of violating Article 8); (Ali) Bucak 1989; Rumpf 1989 andreferences there). There are numerous similar measures against booksand journals written in Kurdish or about the Kurds.

Mehmet Bayrak was prosecuted in October 1991, and risks up to 8years of imprisonment, for editing and publishing the book Kurt HalkTurkuleri [Kurdish folk songs], Oz-Ge Yayintari [Oz-GR Publishers] Nr3, Ankara. The book is a collection of Kurdish folk songs along with themusic. No verdict has yet been pronounced.

When the book Kurdistan'da Turk Endustrisi [Turkish Industry inKurdistan] by Omer Tuku was published in Istanbul in November 1991by DOZ Publishers and Druck GmbH, the book was confiscated inpursuance of a decision by the State Security Court. The publisher isbeing prosecuted; the author lives in Germany (Decision No. 991/511,Investigation No. 991/1035). II

A notc on recent developments

After the Turkish General Election of 20 October 1991 a coalition gov-ernment was formed by the conservative Right Way Party (DYP), led bySlileyman Demirel, and the Social Democrat People's Party (SHP), led

N(lII' r!lc Kurds urI' dcpr"'''d (1/ /llIgUlSII( !IUII/UII rlg/II,I 3SlJ

by Erdal InonLi. The partners agreed on 15 November 1991 on a "de-mocratising package", on 19 November a coalition protocol was signed.and on 25 November the government's programme was proclaimed inParliament. On 30 November the Turkish Parliament passed a vote ofconfidence in the new coalition government.

According to the "democratising package" there would be a thoroughrevision of the law on political parties imposed by the military dictator-ship. and of the repressive trade union law. International covenants onhuman rights, in particular those that Turkey has ratified but never Inreality implemented, would finally be brought into force. Police custody,during which torture has been standard practice, is to be reduced to 24hours. A new law should permit a lawyer to be present during policecustody. The Anti-Terror law too, passed in the spring of 1991 by theMotherland Party of President Ozal, was supposed to be subjected to amajor revision. The same applies to the law on the police. The laws whichsanction banning and censoring should even be scrapped completely.Higher education, radio and television should regain their autonomy.Likewise there should now be an end to governing by means of "decreeswith the force of law", the standard instrument of the Motherland Party,in order to escape parliamentary control. The government would alsolike to change the constitution.

"The state of Turkey is in its state territory and state citizens anindivisible whole. Its language is Turkish", says the Constitution still (seeabove). On the other hand Kurdish identity is supposed to be recognized,Kurdish books and newspapers, music cassettes and the like are supposedto be published freely. There should also be no restriction on writingabout them.

Even so. there are no plans for allowing Kurdish to be taught inschools in future. Nor are radio or television programmes in Kurdishpermitted. Kurdish parties are still forbidden. In other words no funda-mental change of direction in the essentials of policy vis-a.-vis the Kurdsis visible, at least when this article goes to press (June 1994). The Kurdishquestion is still considered a "security problem" - and the oppressionhas in fact escalated.

Sample International and European covenants lvhich Turkish languagelaw is in defiance 0/

Here we merely list a selection of paragraphs from international covenantsand European resolutions/recommendations that Turkish language law

is in defiance of. Most of the paragraphs mentioned can be found in theAppendix of this volume:

The Charier a/the United Nations (1945), paragraphs 6.11, 55.Th£' Univasal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), paragraphs 2, 26The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights(1966, in force since 1976), paragraph 13.(1) (Turkey has not ratIfiedit. though). , . ,The International Covenant on Civil and Pollilcal Rights (1966), Art.27The Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), Art. 30 .The Concluding Document, Vienna Meeting of RepresentatIves ofParticipating States of the Conference on Security and Co-operatIOnin Europe (the CSCE, the Helsinki accords), January 1989, paragraph45 in the section on "Information"; Document of the Copenha~e_n~~etjng of the Conference on the Human Dimension of the CSCE,1990, paragraphs 32, 33, 34, 35, 38, 40; Charter of Pans for a NewEurope, November 1990, CSCEThe Arfe resolution of the European Parliament 0.1' 16 October 1981and the Kuijpers resolution of October 1987, speCIfically the domall1of education; The European Parliament resolutIon on the use oflanguages in the community (Official Journal of the European Com-munities, no C 127/139, 1984), Preamble, 2.

Turkey is also in defiance of all the draft resolutions about the pro-tection of minorities being prepared at a regional level by the Councll ofEurope and the European Parliament - see the AppendIX and Skutnabb-Kangas Phillipson, this volume, for some of these.

Implications of the Turkish policy in Turkish parts ofKurdistan, in Turkey proper, and elsewhere

Linguistic genocide - the UN definition

f' fit' the Convention againstDuring the preparatory work or ormu a Il1g, . '. "U . d N,t' .' 1948) the pOSSibIlIty 01Genocide (accepted by the nlte a Ions ,In, '"

including cultural genocide was discussed. Cultural ge~o,clde ,may takethe form of linguistic genocide (or ImgUlclde). In the fInal draft of theConvention linguistic genocide was included, and defined as follows 111Article III, 1 (quoted from Capotorti 1979: 37):

360 TiM! Skull1ohh-Kol1gos - .')'erIO(· BUClJk !lo\\' rhe Kurds ore de(iril'ed o!lil1gUlslie hUl1wl1 nghrs 361

Tahle 1. Delinilion 01' mother tongue

We have four theses about the definitions:

A. The same person can have different mother tongues, depending onwhich definition is used.

What happens to the Kurdish mother tongue

In order to analyse in more detail what Turkey does when it tries to killthe Kurdish language and culture, we have to relate this to those rightsWhICh a language should have. Since linguistic genocide can only happenm relation to a group's mother tongue, we have to start with definingwhat a mother tongue is.

Definitions of a mother tongue

We have earlier defined it on the basis of several criteria. Table 1 sum-marises the criteria and the corresponding definitions:

Prohibiting the use of the language of the group in daily intercourseor In schools. or the printing and circulation of publications in thelanguage of the group.

The article (111,1) about cultural and linguistic genocide was in theend vetoed and not included in the final Convention. (This omissionpartly explains the intensive work presently going on under Unescoauspices to guarantee linguistic human rights (see Phillipson - Skutnabb-Kangas, 111 thIS volume). What we have left, though, is a definition, agreedupon by many states, of what linguistic genocide means. It is easy to seethat what Turkey does, falls within the definition of linguistic genocide,as defi ned by the UN.

B. A person can have two or more mother tongues according to allcn teria used.C. The mother tongue can change during the course of a person's life,even several times, according to all other criteria except origin.D. The definitions can be organised hierarchically, according to the extentto which they respect linguistic human rights. The definitions by functionand competence are more primitive, while definition using a combinationof origin and internal identification shows more awareness of linguistichuman rights. This presupposes that others accept the internal identifi-cation of a person.

For the purposes or linguistic human rights, mother tongue( s) is/are thelanguage(s) one has learned first and identifies with. For most Kurdishpeople, their mother tongue is Kurdish.

In our view. a universal declaration of linguistic human rights shouldguarantee at an individual level that, in relation to

The mother tongue(s), everybody canidentify with their mother tongue(s) and have this identification ac-cepted and respected by others,learn the mother tongue(s) fully, orally and in writing (which presup-poses that minorities are educated through the medium of their mothertongue(s).use the mother tongue in most official situations (including schools);other languages, that everybody whose mother tongue is not an officiallanguage in the country where s/he is resident, canbecome bilingual (or trilingual, if s/he has 2 mother tongues) in themother tongue(s) and (one of) the official language(s) (according toher own choice);the relalionshljJ het>veen languages,any change of mother tongue is voluntary, not imposed.

If these rights are not guaranteed, deprivation of the mother tonguemay follow. Deprivation of the mother tongue has profound consequencesboth at an individual level and at a group level. At the group leveldeprivation of the mother tongue of a group amounts to linguicide, whichis what Turkey attempts.

Phases in mother tongue deprivationWe will analyse different phases in mother tongue deprivation with thehelp of two scales which describe the attitudes towards minority lan-guages. In the first one Juan Cobarrubias, a Basque researcher living in

Definition

the language(s) one learned lirst

the Ianguage(s) one identifies withthe language(s) one is identified as a native speaker 01' hyothers

the language(s) one knows best

the language(s) one uses most

ORIGIN

IDENTIFICATIONa. II1ternalb. external

Criterion

COMPETENCE

FUNCTION

362 lillie .\kurllo/}/}-Kuu;;us ~ Sel"/u( 8umk

the USA, presents (1983: 71) a "taxonomy of official attitudes towardminority languages. [where] the following can be distinguished:

1. attempting to kill a language;2. letting a language die;3. unsupported coexistence;4. partial support of specific language functions;5. adoption as an official language".

An absolute minimum of minority rights would require at least partialsupport of specific language functions (4 above). Even unsupportedcoexistence (3), leads in most cases to language death within some gen-erations and represents mother tongue deprivation. There are still manycases of letting languages die (2), worldwide. But the attempt to kill theKurdish language (1) by Turkey represents the most blatant example oflinguicide this century. To our knowledge, in no other country in theworld today has attempting to kill a language been formally codified inthe constitution and related laws.

Killing a language expresses what happens at a group level. But thegroup consists of individuals, who have the threatened language as theirmother tongue, the language they have learned first, a language theyknow and use and identify with. To kill a language you have to eitherkill the individuals speaking it or make these individuals change theirmother tongue. Turkey tries to change the mother tongue of the Kurdsand make Turkish their mother tongue. If you are not allowed to identifywith your mother tongue and ethnic group, to learn your mother tongueand to develop it in school, and to use it publicly, the consequence in thelong run is that the language is killed. We show how Turkey through thelaws quoted above systematically tries to replace the Kurdish mothertongue in all its functions. We also contrast Turkey with other countries.

There are other countries which, directly or mostly indirectly try tochange the mother tongues of some or all of their minority populationsaccording to the criteria of function and competence (several articles inthis volume describe such situations). Most such countries do so in acovert way, by not explicitly promoting the use of minority languages ineducation and in official situations. Not being able to use a language inall contexts, especially in schools, leads to a diminishing competence, andthis may lead to language death over several generations. But no othercountries prohibit ll1 their Constitutions the internal identifIcation with alanguage (i. e. forbid self-identification with one's mother tongue), or tryto change the mother tongue by origin (i. e. regulate what parents can

FlliIl III" Kurds urI'

prisonment, torture and intimidation. Turkey also tries to uphold theprohibition in other countries where Kurds from Turkey live as labourmigrants or as political refugees, and it has managed, with the help ofthreats and intimidation of the Kurdish population, coupled with ashameful ignorance and silence on the part of the countries in whichexpatriate Kurds live, to diminish the completely legal public use ofKurdish in other countries too.

In regulating the mother tongue by COMPETENCE schools playadecisive role. If a minority language is not used as a medium of education.it is very unlikely that it is maintained over several generations as alanguage which the children learn in all domains, including literacy al ahigh level. Teaching a minority language as a subject in school is mostlynot enough (see e.g. Boyd 1985). Many indigenous languages which wereupheld for generations, despite colonization, when there were no schools.disappeared in a generation or two, as soon as the children started to gelformal education (e.g. Jordan 1988).

Most countries in the world at least tolerate the development of mothertongue competence, but many permit the teaching of minority mothertongues, at least if it happens outside the school hours and if the statedoes not need to meet all the costs. Also here Turkey is in the far lefttop corner of the grid, with the highest possible degre~ of legally encodedovert prohibition, which it manages to uphold in Turkish parts of Kurd-istan and in Turkey proper. Through false information about the Kurdishlanguage and through prohibiting the publishing of Kurdish materialsTurkey has also severely restricted the possibilities of using Kurdish asthe medium of education in other countries and even the teaching ofKurdish as a subject. Both happen though, to a minor extent and on anexperimental basis, in a few countries, for instance in Sweden.

In regulating the mother tongue by the criterion of external identifi-cation most countries in the world can be placed on either overt or covertpermiSSion or on promotion. The type of regulating that sometimes doesoccur is when dialects of the same language are grouped together incensus statistics under one name. This was, for instance, done in Indiain the census of 1961, when the 1.652 mother tongues claimed by Indianswere reduced by the Central Institute of Indian Languages to some 400different languages. For instance Hindi was reported under almost 100different names (e.g. Pattanayak 1981). It should be emphasized that thisis mostly done by linguists, on linguistic grounds, because the "languages"can be seen as varieties of one language 12 (see also Skutnabb-Kangas, inpress). In sharp contrast to the large majority of countries in the world,

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366 lime'Skurnahh-Kanga.1 - Serla(' Bu('ak

to pass on their language and discourage their children from identifyingwith it. They as speakers "own" the language, and they have the right tomake the choice not to let the language live on in their children, even irwe as socIolinguists may regret it. But parents can also be forced to actin this way or to accept that their children do not learn their mothertongue and do not identify with it (and, consequently, neither learn itproperly nor use it). This is tantamount to killing a language.

Conclusion

This brief review, together with the documentation in the references,can be regarded as showing, that, seen in a global context, Turkey doesmore, with more brutal means, and more overtly, than any other countryIn the world to actively kill a language, Kurdish. Turkey, using all themeans at its disposal, seeks to deprive all the Kurds, regardless of whetherthey live in the Turkish parts of Kurdistan, in Turkey proper, or asmigrants/refugees in other countries, of their identity, their language andtheir cultural heritage. In addition, Turkey tries to deprive Kurds inTurkey proper of their fair share of the resources which they participatein creating and their fair share of power in Turkey proper. And Turkeytries - and this is at the root of all the other forms of deprivation _with all the means at its disposaL to deprive Kurds in the Turkish partof Kurdistan of the fruits of their labour, the resources which they create.and the power to determine their own future in their own country.Kurdistan.

In this, Turkey uses all the means that can be used for exerting power:sticks. carrots and ideas, i. e. punitive force (physical and psychologicalviolence), remunerative force (bargaining) and ideological force (persua-sion) (Gal tung 1980). Turkey (and other countries occupying Kurdistan)kill and torture Kurds and threaten those who refuse to give up theirlanguage, identity and cultural heritage. Turkey holds up the carrot of asuccessful career for assimilated Kurds, trying to persuade them not tobe Kurds. And Turkey tries through lies and silence to persuade Kurdsof the non--existence, unhelpfulness and un-worthiness of their language.culture and ethnic identity and of their lack of right to self-determinationas a nation.

When a people is too numerous to kill physically (as the Kurds are),linguicide and cultural genocide are the only "alternatives" for the oc-cupiers. What cannot be accomplished through physical genocide in one

HIJII' fhe Kurds al'e deprived ()jlinguis/ic human nghfs 367

generation (to annihilate the Kurds) can maybe be accomplished overseveral generations through cultural and linguistic genocide. That is oneor the main reasons why it is as important to demand cultural andlinguistic human rights as it is to demand economic and political rights.

It is urgent and imperative that the international community, and theorganizations that represent it, take steps to force the Turkish governmentto grant to the Kurds and the Kurdish language basic linguistic humanrights.

Significant sections of the international community are increasinglyvoicing protests against Turkish oppression of the Kurds. This was, forInstance, a major concern of the conference on "Minority Rights -policy and practice in South-East Europe", organized by the DanishHelsinki Committee and the Minority Rights Group, London, and heldin Copenhagen March 30-April 1, 1990. At the Ninth World Congressof Applied Linguistics, held at Thessaloniki, Greece, April 15 - 20, 1990,some 80 distinguished professors and other researchers signed a protestagainst the violation of the linguistic human rights of the Kurds in Turkey.They agree that basic linguistic human rights are being violated in abrutal manner in Turkey.

The international community is aware that Turkey follows a policy ofgenocide, physical and cultural, and Iinguicide. Linguistic freedom is theprecondition for the realization of many other fundamental rights. If oneis not allowed to use and develop one's own mother tongue, it is difficultto enjoy such other rights as the right to the free expression of opinion(Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights), the right toenjoy cultural rights (Art. 22 of the UDHR), the right to education (Art.26 of the UDHR), the right to freely participate in the cultural life ofone's community (Article 27.1 of the UDHR). All of these rights (andseveral others) are significantly limited in their scope if basic linguisticrreedom is not granted. Is the international community to continue tocovertly accept this violation of human rights, or is it time that the Kurdswere guaranteed basic justice? So far, the international community hasdone very little. 14

Notes

1. "The villages in Kurdistan, of centuries old Kurdish origin, have been given new Turkishnames." Often villagers first heard these new names at the gendarmerie when they wereasked which village they came from and gave the Kurdish name of their own village.

3fS Tow' Skulnahh-Kangas - Salol' Bucuk !lllll' I!I

370 .':;alul' IJLlcuk

of books like the following face massive fincs and long prison sentences or are alreadyImpnsoned: Dersim Tiilkiileri - Tayt' Lawikt' Dersinr [Folk Songs from the Der51111Region], author Mustafa Duzgun; Derst'/1 Zmw1/ Kurdi - KUr/ce Di! Derslen [AGrammar of the Kurdish Language], author Baran; Cumhuriyt'l Hulk Firkusi PrOI{UIII'III't' KUr/ Surunu [The Kurdish Question and the Program of the Republiean PopularParty], author dr. Ismail Besikcl; Klnlt' t': Runak [Who am f - Enlightenedj, a bookof poetry by Cigerxwin, the best known eontemporary Kurdish poet who died In exile'in Sweden IlJ~4; Cagdw Kiirdis{wr Tanhi [Contemporary History of Kurdlstanj, authulLucien Rambout; KUr/ Ulusal Harekt'llai Vt' 15. Yuzyildu c.;unullluzt' t;rlllt'IJI-Kill'fi/iskileri [The Kurdish National Movement and the RelatIOns Between the Armeniansand the Kurds from the Fifteenth Century Until Today], author Garo Sasuni; SO/1sLlzlukulkesinder Musallar [Fairly Tales from the Land of the Endless], author Metin Ciyayl.And so on. If anyone reading this article wants to have more information about (andperhaps protest against) these gross violations of human rights, including basie lingUisticrights, they ean contact The International Association for Human Rights In Kurdistan.Postfach 10 45 51, D-2~045 Bremen, Germany, fax 49 - 421 - 70 38 85.We eould also take this arlicle as an example. There are two authors, and we have acommon aim, to Wl'Jte a sClenlitlc arlick about the lingUistic rights of the Kurds. Wewould bc eonsidercd a terrorist organization according to Article S. Claiming that thcKurds exist and that they should have what is here defined as lingUIstic human rightsis a terrorist Crime, as defined in Articles 1 and 8 in Law 3713. If we were Turkishcitizens, we could be sentenced under the Anti-Terror law, Article 8, with heavyImprisonment and fines. In addition, both the publisher of this book and the sel'leseditot·s could be Imprisoned and fined severely, and their assets could be confiscated.So could the assets (e.g. buildings) of our plaees of work (Universities if Bremen andRoskilde) and the publisher's assets. If you, dear reader, wrote a reviewal' this artielcin a SCIentilic journal and said that you agreed that Kurdish children should have theright to learn Kurdish, or If you JOined a local Committee for the Human Rights 01'the Kurds (as the former Danish Prime Minister Anker Jorgensen who is on the Boardthe Danish Committee), you would likewise be considered a terrorist criminal, andcould be imprtsoned, according to Article 2, even if you never did anything for theCommittee or for the educHtion of Kurdish children.

12. An example for non-linguists: IndIans who regard themselves as speakers of BhoJPuJ'Ior Maithili (I.e. names ref1ectIng lI1ternal identificatIon) are classified by lingUIsts asHindi speakers (external identification). This is comparable to classifying Opal, ClappcsFaVOUrite and Victoria (all varietIes of plums) as plums. But when Kurdish mothertongue speakers are elassified as Turks (external identilication), it IS as incorrect ascalling a Victoria plum an apple.

13. For Instance Indonesia encourages ethnic Chinese to shed their Chinese names, andhas a variety of measures restncting the use of Chinese - see Jernudd, in this volume.

14. See von Nostltz IlJ8lJ on thc European Parliament and the Kurdish question, Voigt1989 on The Human Rights PrOVisions of the 1lJ75 Helsinki Accords and the Kurds.Saado 1989 on the UN and the Kurds (but see European Parliament, note 2) andHelsinki Walch 1990.