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April 12, 2008
Kurds, Turks, and the Tower of Babel
[Originally published in Turkish Daily News]
One of the interesting episodes in Turkey’s past week was a quarrel between Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Diyarbakır Bar President Sezgin Tanrıkulu. In a gathering of NGO’s and government officials, Mr. Tanrıkulu, an ethnic Kurd, asked from the prime minister “not only economic, but also political reforms” for Turkey’s southeast, including the right to “Kurdish education.” Erdoğan didn’t like the idea and, instead, replied with an argument: “Education in a mother tongue does not exist anywhere in the world!”
I disagree with Mr. Erdoğan on this, and I think his government should consider at least a form of what Mr. Tanrıkulu had asked for. (Not “education in Kurdish,” but “education of Kurdish” might be the best formula.) I bet many readers of the Turkish Daily News, especially the ones from Europe, would also disagree with Mr. Erdoğan, and even express their dismay in the face of Turkey’s unwillingness to grant Kurds the right to get education in their mother tongue. But one should also see that there are reasons to be lenient on Turkey’s fixation on the “national language.” It is, after all, something that Turkey not invented, but imported – and from nowhere but good-old Europe.
From Babel to Paris
In the beginning, mankind had a single language. Or, at least, the Bible says so. According to the Book of Genesis, it was God who first gave a single language to humans. But then, after the Tower of Babel affair, He created other tongues. “That is why it was called Babel,” says Genesis, “because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world.”
Therefore, from a Judeo-Christian point of view, the existence of multiple languages was simply a result of divine will. Islam, not too surprisingly, confirmed the same wisdom. “Among [God]’s Signs," the Koran declared, “is the creation of the heavens and earth, and the variety of your languages and colors.”
Perhaps that was one reason why different languages and tongues co-existed in the pre-modern, religiously-defined era. Both in Christian Europe and in the Islamic Middle East, native languages were regarded as a part of the divinely ordained natural order.
Things started to change with modernity. The modern mind was a constructivist one – it aimed at re-creating the natural order as it willed. Yet some moderns, especially the British ones, decided to carry out this construction in harmony with pre-existing forms. They, after all, respected the natural (or, say, divine) order. Other moderns, especially the French ones, preferred to destroy all existing traditions and re-construct everything right from the beginning. They were, as they proudly declared, revolutionaries.
Native languages would be one – only one – of the many victims of the revolutionary modernists. Actually in the early stages of the French Revolution – that bloody archetype of revolutionary modernism – liberty of language was declared for all citizens of the French Republic. Yet soon, this policy was abandoned in favor of the imposition of a common language aimed at destroying local tongues. The ideology was expounded in the “Report on The Necessity and Means to Annihilate The Patois and to Universalize The Use of The French Language,” written by a Henri Grégoire and presented to the National Convention on June 4, 1794.
From that point on, the French Republic initiated a long war against the “non-French” languages and cultures – a policy which lasted until very recently, and whose traces arguably still survive. The basic idea behind “national education” in France has been the eradication of plurality. After 1918, the use of German in Alsace-Lorraine would be outlawed. In 1925, Anatole de Monzie, minister of public education, declared, "For the linguistic unity of France, the Breton language must disappear." Only in 1964 the French government would allow Breton on regional television – and only for one and a half minutes. Yet even in 1972, President Georges Pompidou would autocratically announce, “There is no place for the regional languages and cultures in a France that intends to mark Europe deeply."
France might have been the inventor of forced assimilation, but it was not its monopolist. “In the 19th and 20th centuries, most European states conducted politics of forced assimilation against their ethnic and linguistic minorities,” reminds Wikipedia. Even Norway, a beacon of peace and good life, carried out a “Norwegianisation process” on its ethnic minorities such as the Sami and the Kven – well up to the 1970s. (1972, by the way, was the year that homosexuality was decriminalized in Norway.)
Outgrowing Nation-Building
So, when Europeans criticize Turkey’s mistakes about its Kurdish citizens, they should be a little bit restrained. Yes, Turkey has taken huge missteps on this issue, and it needs fundamental reforms. But the mindset that led Turkey to the denial and forced assimilation of Kurds was not homemade. It was invented and first implemented in Europe.
Alas, before the arrival and dominance of that idea – i.e., revolutionary modernism – the Kurds existed in these lands and nobody forced any assimilation on them. The Ottoman State was a multi-ethnic and multi-religious empire. Pluralism, if you will, was the hallmark of the Ottomans. Then came the Turkish Republic, whose founders were, unfortunately, inspired by the French way of nation-building. Hence started the Kurd’s drama.
Today, the bright future of Turkey lies in its capacity to outgrow that early revolutionary modernist paradigm. We should not cease being a modern nation-state, to be sure, but we have to make it more liberal and pluralist. Europeans, of course, should help Turkey’s walk on this thorny path – but do this humbly and patiently. They just should keep in mind how long their liberalization has lasted, and how recently their illiberalism ended.
Posted by Mustafa Akyol at April 12, 2008 12:01 PM
I agree with the prime minister on this one. In the Arizona where I live most publications are done in both English and Spanish and an attempt is made to accommodate Spanish-speaking people in government agencies and private businesses. But education is done in English as I think it should be. A single nation should have a single common language.
Posted by: Martin Bebow at April 12, 2008 6:16 PM
Personally as a Turkish-American, the idea of going to an all-Turkish school where there is no English whatsoever spoken never even crossed my mind. I can speak Turkish at home, write in it, do whatever I want with it...But when I go to school or do any type of business, it's all English. Why? Who cares? Maybe because it's the national language, but I really don't care why. I never had a problem with this arrangement. Is the US government suppressing my cultural rights because of this? Am I being forcibly Anglicized? Of course not.
If Kurds really want to segregate themselves from the rest of Turkish society, fine, let them get their school lessons in Kurdish or Farsi or whatever they call their language.
It's not like it makes a difference, instead of cursing us Turks in our language they'll curse us in theirs instead.
Posted by: Kerim at April 16, 2008 2:52 AM
Mr. Akyol is, of course, right again. Unfortunately, racist and politically motivated segregation does not die easily. It took compassionate whites and politically activated blacks years to break the back of segregation in the US. It will take years to right the wrongs in the Kurdish situation as well.
As a linguist, nothing appals me more than the deliberate extinction of languages around the world and no right should be more fundamental than the right to speak and interact in one's own language. This obviously does not mean that minority groups can force their language on others or supplant majority langugages but allowances should be made to honor their culture.
Mr. Akyol is unique in his courageous defense of Kurdish cultural rights and should be saluted for his stand.
Mr. Akyol, I challenge you to continue the crusade against bigotry in your own country. These issues need to be addressed on your Turkish site with about twice the frequency we see on the English side. After all, not much value in "preaching to the choir" or selling "tere" to the "tere" seller :-)
All the best!
Posted by: Robert at April 18, 2008 2:59 AM
"If Kurds really want to segregate themselves from the rest of Turkish society, fine, let them get their school lessons in Kurdish or Farsi or whatever they call their language."
How nice, to publicly state one's denigration of "their" language. Herein lies the problem methinks.
"It's not like it makes a difference, instead of cursing us Turks in our language they'll curse us in theirs instead."
Is it just me or do others seem to think that this huge "us" and "them" mentality which is so rampant in certain segments of Turkish society is at the heart of so many of the country's woes?
Perhaps the root issue here is why certain Kurds curse the Turks and Turkey, whether it be in Kurdish, Turkish, English, Japanese or Martian...
Posted by: Arj at April 19, 2008 12:21 PM
Robert
The Kurdish issue in Turkey is nothing like the situation of blacks and segregation in the US. Turkey has had 2 Kurdish Presidents, how many black Presidents has the US had? Go to Diyarbakir or Urfa first then come back and tell me Kurds are subject to the same laws and discrimination as the blacks were in the US.
Posted by: Kerim at April 21, 2008 6:24 PM
Mr Kerim,
If a black man completely dissasociated himself from the black community, gave public and coded veiled messages in support of the racist far-right, pushed all the right nationalist ('God bless America' etc) buttons and in general turned himself into a God-loving white all-American hero (which he can't) and bleache his face, then he would stand a good chance.
The fact that Turkey has had two 'Kurdish' presidents does not mean there is no discrimination against Kurds. It just means (a)there is a sizeable Kurdish (sorry, 'mountain Turk') population in Turkey, and (b)those particular individuals played the Turkish nationalist/Kemalist card.
Posted by: Arj at April 23, 2008 6:46 PM
"Go to Diyarbakir or Urfa first then come back and tell me Kurds are subject to the same laws and discrimination as the blacks were in the US."
Is that the same Diyarbakir and Urfa with woeful unemployment and an chronic lack of investment, where the local populace see the central/federal government as an alien and repressive force, the Diyarbakir and Urfa where the local police are all but despised by the local population, where severe tensions between local youth and the rigid, racist unbending authorities often leads to conflagaration?
Sounds like the parallels with the USA are striking.
Posted by: Arj at April 23, 2008 6:55 PM
Once again a very interesting an brave article Mr. Akyol, thank you. However, I could not help needing to point a couple of things which caught my attention from your article.
So, when Europeans criticize Turkey’s mistakes about its Kurdish citizens, they should be a little bit restrained.
Well, you actually mentioned only the situation of France, which might be the most centralist country in Europe. You can also have a look at the situation of Welsh in Britain, Basque in Spain, or Catalan in the Catalan-speaking regions of Spain (where I come from, as a native Catalan speaker).
In our regions, we are taught our language and THROUGH our language from primary school until university and we grow up as perfect bilinguals in Catalan/Spanish.
When you advocate for education "of Kurdish" as another independent subject as English or Maths might be, you are positioning the subject in a second position below the Turkish language, through which everything else is taught. Every single language is valid for teaching and studying everything, be it science, philosophy or whatever, and the fact that some students prefer to study in which is nothing but their mother tongue will not mean their complete rejection of the Turkish language (as I said this formula resulted in bilingualism in my land), as Turkish is still the dominating language in the country (press, TV, government...).
I don't think the Spanish system of autonomies is the perfect solution for these problems as we also have our problems, but for the future, you'd rather look for answers a bit more in Spain, Switzerland and Belgium and a bit less in France.
Posted by: Joe at April 27, 2008 4:43 PM