By Leo Deener

The Kurdish population of Turkey has been violently repressed since the establishment of the Turkish Republic. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk founded Turkey under Kemalism, an ideology of sweeping reform aimed at distinguishing the new nation from the Ottoman Empire and embracing Westernization. Symbolized by the Six Arrows—Republicanism, Nationalism, Secularism, Statism, Reformism, and Folkism—Kemalism sought to create a secular, Western-style nation-state defined by Sunni Islam, the Turkish language, and ethnic Turkish identity. This transformation marginalized non-Turkish groups within the new republic, including Greeks, Jews, Armenians, and, most notably, the Kurdish population. The repression of Kurdish religion, culture, and specifically language stems from this nationalist vision.

Despite the Kurdish homeland being the southeastern portion of Turkey, there are between two and four million Kurds in Istanbul. The status of the Kurdish language in Istanbul is an ongoing issue. While the state has tried to repress the language as a means of repressing the people for many years, the Kurds have sought to revive it through traditional language revival programs. For the Kurdish people, language is a central vehicle of cultural heritage amid state repression. Recently, Turkey sought to loosen these restrictions to meet the human rights standards of joining the EU. There is even a national television station that broadcasts in Kurdish. Still, the lasting impact of officially and politically banning a language cannot be undone. 

In the face of linguistic repression, however, many nonprofits and NGOs have sprung up to publish, teach, and canonize the Kurdish language and its literature. I spoke to two of these organizations in Turkey: the Kurdish Research Association and Kiraathane. The Kurdish Research Association is the most important organization dedicated to Kurdish language and culture in Istanbul. The association’s main mission is the survival and strength of Kurdish languages. They teach three Kurdish dialects: Kurmanji, Zazaki, and Sorani, and publish instructional books in Kurdish. The organization also has an activist wing dedicated to advocating for education in the mother tongue across Turkey, challenging the government mandate that requires education to be conducted in Turkish.

In my interview with the director of the organization, she expressed that many Kurds from the heavily Kurdish southeastern region of Turkey, like herself, can speak the language from their parents speaking it to them at home, but are not literate in it. Most Kurds cannot read or write in Kurdish nor do they know the language’s formal grammar. The Kurdish Research Association attempts to fill that gap through language arts education. She expressed that there is a general excitement around the Association’s programs among Istanbul’s Kurdish population as Turkey’s Kurds want to preserve the language as a means of cultural survival. After the 2016 Turkish Coup attempt, Erdogan’s regime cracked down on civil society and organizations it deemed a risk. The Kurdish Research Association fell victim to this crackdown and was shut down in 2016 and they fear this could happen again at any moment. But activists like the woman I spoke to at the Association are willing to work through the persecution to fight for ethnic and cultural survival through linguistic revival.

Kurdish language advocacy in Istanbul is not only a mission of Kurdish-specific organizations. The other organization I spoke to, Kiraathane, fits this more general civil society makeup. Kiraathane is a liberal NGO based in Istanbul dedicated to promoting independent journalism and providing a common space for ideas to flow freely without the restrictive ire of the state. Like the Kurdish Research Association, Kiraathane holds classes and journalism events in the Kurdish language. They are also working on publishing literary classics as a means of concretizing the grammar of the Kurdish language and preserving it for future generations. I interviewed a Kurdish employee at Kirathaane who expressed that though many municipalities in Turkey have piloted programs to teach Kurdish formally, many have been shut down by the Turkish government’s implementation of the loyal trustee program. This is a national policy that replaces Kurdish mayors in the southeast with mayors deemed more sufficiently loyal to the state. This has made the work of NGOs, like Kiraathane, even more important. The employee expressed a similar anxiety about their work being shut down by the government at any time, but also was determined that their critical cultural heritage work must continue at any cost. These two NGOs represent the surface of the civil society in Turkey that is working to canonize, preserve, and promote Kurdish within Turkey. The mere presence of the organizations is fragile, but critical to the work of preserving a people’s language and history. 

The history of Kurds in Turkey is fraught with violent repression and cultural erasure. However, Kurds refuse to relinquish their history through linguistic erasure as they maintain a distinct identity as Turkey’s largest ethnic minority. Despite the Turkish state’s effort to erase the Kurdish language as a means of enforcing a policy of Turkish ethnic homogeneity, the work of NGOs, such as The Kurdish Research Association and Kiraathane, is proof that the Kurdish language, and therefore the Kurds, have not and will not vanish. They are an inspiring testament to the resiliency of the Kurdish people and to the NGO landscape in Istanbul and Turkey as a whole.