In an effort to clean up its image as a step towards gaining membership in the European Union, Turkey’s parliament passed legislation on August 3 expanding the linguistic and cultural rights of its historically oppressed Kurdish minority. The new laws will allow Kurdish language television and radio broadcasts, and the teaching of Kurdish and other dialects in special school programs. The parliament also abolished the death penalty.
Some lawmakers and observers were skeptical that the new reforms would be implemented and enforced properly. Many nationalist lawmakers were against the bill, characterizing it as a dangerous concession to Kurdish ‘separatists’, with whom Turkey waged a 15-year war.
It is estimated that Kurds make up at least 20% of Turkey’s population. Most live in southeast Turkey, in what the Kurds refer to as Kurdistan, the historical homeland which also includes parts of Iraq, Syria, and Iran. Repressive policies have historically characterized the government’s approach to Kurdish issues. Until 1991, speaking Kurdish at all was a crime, and repeated attempts by Kurds to organize politically have met with continued harassment and outright bans from the government. Tensions are in no small part due to the systematic economic isolation of Kurdish-populated regions, which dramatically reduces the quality of life in Kurdish communities as compared with the rest of Turkey.
In recent months, a number of Kurds have received prison sentences for various expressions of their Kurdish identity, and some children were even prosecuted for attending a rally for Kurdish education programs. Arrests and convictions for seemingly innocuous activities such as singing in Kurdish and giving Kurdish names to one’s children have also taken place this year, despite laws in place permitting these practices.
Kurds have responded to the new measures with a hopeful but cautious attitude. Under the Anti-Terror laws and in ‘Emergency Rule’ areas, the government has acted in defiance of its own laws, in order to contain what it describes as threats to national security. Counted among such ‘separatist’ threats are activities such as listening to Kurdish music, which, though technically legal, has sent many people to jail.
Kurds have praised the move, calling it a “positive, if belated, step forward”. But Kurds desire further reforms, in the form of constitutional amendments, to fully guarantee their cultural rights. As it stands, the National Security Council reviews every new Kurdish language course proposal, and gives or withholds its approval. The Ministers Committee and the Ministry of Education then rule on the proposal. Such methods have Kurds worried that the new law will have little effect on how Kurdish education is actually pursued in Turkey.
In its statement on the reforms, the Kurdistan National Congress applauded the move as a promising step towards a just resolution of the “Kurdish question”. But it also called for steps to be taken to improve the political situation of the Kurds: “New electoral legislation and a reform of the law on political parties, which will have to follow this step, will contribute to the modernization and democratization of Turkey and to the representation of the Kurdish people in Parliament.”
