Silencing a culture.
How to oppress a group of people? Make the speaking of their native language a crime.
Get a load of this article in today's New York Times. I'm including a good bit of it here, with the link at the bottom if you'd care to read the rest.
Kurd’s Speech Defies Turkish Taboo
By SABRINA TAVERNISE
Published: February 24, 2009
ISTANBUL — A prominent Kurdish lawmaker gave a speech in his native Kurdish in Turkey’s Parliament on Tuesday, breaking taboos and also the law in Turkey, a country that has long repressed its Kurdish minority for fear it would try to secede.
Turkey’s state television cut off the live broadcast of the official, Ahmet Turk, as he spoke to members of his political party, the Democratic Society Party, known by its Turkish initials, D.T.P.
It was the second time in recent history that a speech was delivered in Kurdish in Parliament. In 1991, Leyla Zana spoke in Kurdish, her native language, when she was sworn in as a deputy. She had immunity as a lawmaker, but it was later stripped and she served 10 years in prison on other charges.
Turkey has a troubled past with its Kurds, who make up at least a fifth of its population. The Turkish military fought a war with a Kurdish militant group, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or P.K.K., in the predominantly Kurdish southeast in the 1980s and 1990s. The area was subsequently governed by martial law, and speaking Kurdish was prohibited.
The violence has decreased drastically, and Kurdish is no longer banned as a language, but its public use at events like Tuesday’s speech, or at rallies, on fliers or in advertisements, is still illegal. Kurdish officials like Mr. Turk have been trying to push the boundaries of those rules.
“Being multilingual is a richness,” Mr. Turk said in Turkish, before he switched to Kurdish. “Protecting this richness, keeping it alive, is a requirement of this era.”
He said he wanted to speak his native language in honor of a United Nations holiday celebrating world languages, and because of “meaningless oppression and prohibitions on Kurdish persist.”
For more, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/25/world/europe/25turkey.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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I find it interesting that Kurdish is no longer a "banned" language, because this reaction makes me very confused as to how it could be claimed that it is not.
ReplyDeleteTalk about infringement on freedom of speech! I never thought of speaking Spanish or French in the U.S. as a freedom, but I guess it is. Wow, next thing you know, someone will ban sitting cross-legged on benches.
ReplyDeleteThe thing here is control. According to the article, violence diminished after the speaking of Kurdish was prohibited. I can't think of this story without remembering a news event that happened when some of you were still children... the poison gas massacre of the Kurds in Iraq by Saddam Hussein. See the link, if you are interested. It contains a single image that I've never been able to forget. http://www.kdp.se/old/chemical.html
ReplyDeleteSorry... you will need to cut and paste the link I referenced in the last post... the single image that I referred to is the first one, at the top of the page. Please be warned that there are other images as well, and all are disturbing.
ReplyDelete