by: JOOST LAGENDIJK*
Without a doubt, the Kurdish issue is one of the most important political
problems in Turkey.
Turkish Zaman
The problem is not only a bloody political issue involving the deaths of more
than 30,000 people, but at the same time a crisis felt at all the layers of the
system from local governments to the Parliament. Although the former policy of
the republic, which was founded on the practice of denying Kurds, is about to
completely rot, the “Kurdish reality” as articulated by politicians such as
Demirel, Özal, Erdoğan and others cannot be said to have been appreciated well
enough.
The most recent example of this is a decision reached by the Eighth Chamber of
the Council of the State on June 14, 2007 to remove the mayor of the Sur
district of Diyarbakır, Abdullah Demirbaş, and the members of the municipal
council. Endorsing the decision made by the interior minister, the high court
ruled in October 2006 that giving information on various municipal services such
as culture, art, environment, city cleaning and health in languages other than
Turkish is against the Constitution, removing the people in question from
office. However, the above-mentioned municipality conducted research and
discovered that 24 percent of people spoke Turkish in their daily lives, 72
percent Kurdish, 1 percent Arabic and 3 percent Syrian and Armenian, resulting
in the decision to give services in these languages to reach all the people
benefiting from them. As a matter of fact, even though one wouldn’t need to
conduct a study to find out that the majority of people in Diyarbakır speak
Kurdish -- not Turkish -- it turned out a useful one in terms of revealing the
exact figures.
The Interior Ministry described this decision as a political one and determined
that Article 222 of the Turkish Penal Code (TCK) was violated. The high court
agreed with the ministry’s view and also came to the opinion that “a quality has
formed that exceeds the exercising of the fundamental rights and liberties
defined and secured by the Constitution and international conventions and that
is against the purpose and implications of these rules” and decided to remove
the mayor from office and depose the municipal council. This decision of the
Council of the State indubitably reflects the laws in Turkey and the
constitutional realities and also clearly defines the boundaries of Kurdish.
While it is a necessity to be respectful toward the decisions of the high court,
doing so is giving rise to dismaying results. The mayor and the members of the
municipal council will not be able to stand for the elections to be renewed in
two months’ time and, what’s more, they will stand trial because they committed
a “crime.”
The mayor of the Diyarbakır Metropolitan Municipality, Osman Baydemir, is being
subjected to a similar set of interrogations and judicial process. Most of these
issues taken to court relate to using Kurdish, as was the case with the
problematic celebration cards used in 2006 and 2007. These cards, containing
nothing more than good wishes for the new year in Turkish, English and Kurdish,
were taken by the prosecutor as enough evidence to launch an investigation. The
prosecutor, who seems to have spent little time on the indictment, cut it very
short and wrote: “It was determined that the suspect used a Kurdish sentence in
the celebration card, ‘Sersela We Piroz Be’ (Happy New Year). I, on behalf of
the public, demand that he be punished under Article 222/1 of the Turkish Penal
Code.” So, it will benefit us to look at this article of the penal code a bit
closer.
Law on protection of the Turkish alphabet
Article 222 of the TCK was put into effect in the 1920s. The young republic,
which decided to stop using Arabic letters and write Turkish with the Latin
alphabet, made a very radical move in regard to written communication. The
scholars who oversaw judicial and religious matters in the society -- and whose
command of Arabic was perfect -- were not only divested of their positions in
the state with this move, but were also thrust outside the chain of
communication between people and the state. Through crash courses on the new
alphabet, the founders tried to generate new “elites” and made it an obligation
to use the Latin alphabet. This article, as well as the law that obliged the
wearing of the felt hat by every male citizen and the ban on wearing the fez and
similar “old” clothes outside mosques, bluntly illustrates the purpose of the
lawmaker. With this article, the scholars all over Turkey were reduced to
invisibility in society.
However legally surprising it may be to see this article used against
communication in Kurdish, the practice fits with the article’s history and
purpose. The Latin alphabet is also used to write Kurdish in Turkey, but it has
letters like “î” and “w,” which are not used in Turkish. Legally speaking, the
penal code’s article in question should have been directed against using these
extra letters, which are not used in Turkish. The prosecutor did not even take
the trouble to find a link between this article and the “crime.” According to
him, Mayor Baydemir used a Kurdish sentence to celebrate the new year and
therefore committed a “crime.” Maybe the prosecutor did not want to delve into
details as the English version of the celebration, Happy New Year, also contains
the letter “w.” In fact the letter “w” constituting a crime in Kurdish but not
in English would be pushing it a little in the legal and political sense.
Kurdish still a forbidden language
Similar things happened and are still happening to Kurdish names. These letters
used to write Kurdish names are still not accepted in Turkey, and families are
forced to write such names using the Turkish alphabet. The increasingly
widespread execution of laws against speaking Kurdish similar to Article 222 in
recent years makes the issue politically significant. Human rights defenders
perceive this development as a new means of pressure against Kurdish people. In
election campaigns, the investigations launched into the use of Kurdish did not
produce any results and, to reach voters, the courts that settled the matters
defined the use of local tongues as a fundamental right to be exercised and did
not see any element of guilt. The newly launched investigations and lawsuits
filed give the impression that a political will has come into the play to
prevent Kurdish from being spoken as a language of communication. The purpose
appears to be the prevention of using Kurdish in communication between
institutions and associations. What is feared, perhaps, is that Kurdish may
gradually become a normal means of daily communication in provinces like
Diyarbakır where the majority of people speak Kurdish.
Looking at the matter from a broader perspective tells us that the decisions
made by the local government of the Sur district and similar places to use
Kurdish as a means of social communication also has a political dimension to it,
thus it would be naďve to overlook the fact that the issue goes beyond being
merely linguistics. However, the base of the problem is still whether the
Kurdish language should be used for communication or not. After issuing a press
release, the mayors went into details in their statements and stressed that they
would continue using Kurdish whether or not it constituted a crime. The
high-tension line in Turkey related to the Kurdish issue is thus laid down. This
line is dividing people into two parties based on a question of whether using a
simple Kurdish sentence like “Sersela We Piroz Be” means separatism -- therefore
constituting a “crime” -- and the opinion that Kurdish is a very normal means of
communication in a city comprising predominantly Kurds.
There are strong legal grounds supporting our view. As part of reforms made in
harmonization with the EU, it has become possible to use “languages other than
Turkish,” thanks to a change in Article 26 of the Constitution. These reforms
include the right to learn Kurdish and broadcast and publish in this language.
If these reforms have any meaning at all, Kurdish should allowed use in
Diyarbakır. We see that the mayors, who must be listened to, also put forward
strong arguments.
The Turkish Law on Municipalities, just as with all democratic countries,
charges municipal administrations with being the first to give various
information and services, envisaging that people will participate in the
decision-making process when it comes to cultural, environmental, health and
other local issues. The mayors in return state that to be able to give those
services, they must use Kurdish as it is spoken by the majority. They also point
out that a certain segment of the population either doesn’t know Turkish at a
necessary level or can’t speak it at all. It will probably be beneficial to
allow the use of Kurdish in order to reach as much of society as possible for
important issues such as, say, cleanliness. We deem it unnecessary to stress
once again that the language is indispensable to cultural matters. Moreover, the
European Human Rights Bill -- very applicable considering Turkey is a founding
member of the European Council -- declares it a fundamental right of individuals
to use their mother language and receive information in that language, making it
compulsory to respect to this right.
As a consequence, we believe it is high time that Turkey starts implementing a
truly modern democracy and leave behind the practice of finding an element of
guilt in every Kurdish sentence written on a simple celebration card. Unless a
line can be drawn between violence and terrorism and the exercising of
fundamental rights such as communicating in one’s native tongue, people’s rights
and the law will continue being vague concepts. Finding a lasting solution to
the Kurdish issue is only possible with the supremacy of rights and law.
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*Cochairman of the Turkey-EU Joint Parliamentary Commission
