<h1 class="content-item-title">
Turkey's Kurdish-Language Policy: Learning from Europe </h1>
<p class="">
<cite><a href="http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/experts/view/cagaptay-soner">Soner Cagaptay</a></cite>
<cite> and <a href="http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/experts/view/evans-tyler">Tyler Evans</a></cite>
</p>
<p>
<a href="http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/03/turkey-kurdish-issue-language-policy-european-precedent.html"><em>Al-Monitor</em></a></p>
<p>March 17, 2013</p>
<div>
<div class="abstract">
<p>To get back on the road toward peace, democratization, and
perhaps even EU membership, Turkey's leaders will need to forge ahead on
language reforms aimed at recognizing the country's ethnic minorities.
</p>
</div>
<p>
The European Union's (EU) February 28th decision to restart membership
talks with Ankara breathed life into Turkey's EU accession prospects.
And this mood of cautious optimism has only blossomed as Turkey's
government moves forward on its negotiations with the Kurdistan Workers
Party (PKK). As a precursor to the talks, Ankara has demonstrated its
seriousness by pushing through a number of reforms allowing the Kurdish
language into the public sphere: last month a court decision removed
restrictions on using Kurdish in political campaigns, and Turkish courts
have begun allowing testimony in the Kurdish language. To get back on
the road toward peace, democratization, and perhaps even EU membership,
Turkey's leaders will need to forge ahead on these reforms. But it won't
be easy.</p>
<p>
Turkey is a multi-ethnic, predominantly Muslim nation that is home to
Muslims of Turkish and Kurdish ethnicity. And, unbeknownst to many
outsiders, it is also a tapestry of many other ethno-linguistic groups.
Featured in the mix are millions of descendants of ŽmigrŽs from the
Ottoman Balkans, such as the Bosnians, and from the Black Sea basin,
such as the Circassians. Because Ottoman rulers classified their
subjects based on religious affiliation, rather than ethnicity, these
Muslim groups fused into a single political entity, coalescing around
the Turkish nation, as the empire collapsed. Hence, the old joke that
"if you scratch a Turk, you'll find a Circassian."</p>
<p>
This historical legacy has bestowed upon Turkey a mindset that is open
to religious group differentiation, but resistant to notions of ethnic
separateness among Muslims. This makes Turkey's Kurdish language reform
agenda unprecedented, and also a risky political wager for the ruling
Justice and Development Party (AKP). Influential currents in Turkey's
political debate are already accusing the AKP of rending the very fabric
of the Turkish nation.</p>
<p>
Fortunately, Turkey is not the first country to face deep challenges
related to minority language reforms. European societies have grappled
with their own minority language puzzles for decades.</p>
<p>
If Europe has one lesson to offer, it is that there is no
one-size-fits-all approach to language reforms. Tellingly, the EU does
not have a common language policy. The clearest articulation of common
European principles with regard to linguistic rights is codified in the
European Council's European Charter of Regional and Minority Languages
(ECRML). This charter aims to promote "the recognition of the regional
or minority languages as an expression of cultural wealth" (Art. 7-1a).
The heterogeneity of Europe's language policies is manifest in the
structure of the agreement, which leaves many provisions optional and
encourages parties to customize regulations "according to the situation
of each language."</p>
<p>
And even with this flexibility, many countries in Europe -- namely,
Belgium, Bulgaria, Estonia, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, and
Lithuania -- have not acceded to the charter. This non-convergence on
language policy is in large part a consequence of the political
sensitivities surrounding the topic of language diversity in Europe. But
even European countries with especially onerous historical hang-ups
associated with language reform have been able to accomplish much in
past decades.</p>
<p>
This has often been achieved through compromises that secure minority
language rights without directly treading on sensitive political
grounds. France and Bulgaria stand out as especially instructive case
studies for Turkey in this regard.</p>
<p>
Like Turkey, neither country is a party to the ECRML. And in both
countries the topic of language is politicized in a manner that bears
certain similarities to Turkey. In France, Corsican nationalists have
challenged the central authority, sometimes using violence in a manner
somewhat analogous to the PKK's violent campaign against Turkey's
centralizing tendencies. And in Bulgaria, nationalist groups such as the
ATAKA party have become a grassroots force against reform, recalling
Turkey's ultra-nationalists who stand in vehement opposition to greater
minority rights (incidentally, the major minority language in Bulgaria
happens to be Turkish). Yet both of these European countries have
managed to accomplish significant reforms that open the public sphere to
minority languages.</p>
<p>
In 2008, after lengthy debate, the French legislature amended the
constitution with a provision that officially recognized the existence
of regional languages in France, describing them as "belong[ing] to the
heritage of France" (Art. 75-1). In this landmark amendment, France
officially recognized its ethnic and cultural diversity, although it
stopped short of explicitly granting any concrete rights. At the same
time, in practice France provides ample room for minority languages to
flourish in local contexts. Indeed, there are 400,000 French students
learning minority languages or receiving part of their curriculum in
these tongues. Bilingual education, in which French and the regional
language are given equal time, is offered in Breton, Occitan, Corsican,
Basque, Catalan, and German. And this education is sometimes supported
by public funds.</p>
<p>
Bulgaria is a useful reference for Turkey as well. Drafted during
Bulgaria's transition from communism, the Bulgarian constitution is the
result of an unsteady balance between liberal reformers and resistant
nationalists. Consequently, the document does not recognize any
particular minority groups; however, it does contain protections for
individual cultural expression for those who identify with cultural or
ethnic groups. For example, Article 54 recognizes the individual's right
"to develop his own culture in accordance with his ethnic
self-identification, which shall be recognized and guaranteed by the
law."</p>
<p>
Education in the Bulgarian language is compulsory for all citizens.
However, Bulgarian Turks cannot be prevented from receiving education in
Turkish alongside their Bulgarian coursework. Proposals from the
Bulgarian Ministry of Education have even envisioned making Turkish part
of the required curriculum in Turkish-majority areas and an optional
subject in areas where Turks are a minority. In practice, Turkish is
generally taught as an elective or an extra-curricular subject. The
state has granted limited funding to Turkish language and literature
courses and trains teachers in Turkish curriculum (Turkey often provides
course materials, which Bulgaria requires be free of any Turkish
state-centric patriotic sentiment).</p>
<p>
To be sure, no combination of models from Europe can form an exact
template for Turkey. Most importantly, reformers must pay careful
attention to Turkey's Ottoman legacy, which makes ethnic differentiation
among Muslims an especially dicey subject. In this respect, enshrining
collective rights for Turkey's Kurds could provoke a backlash that
reformers can avoid by simply taking an approach based on expanding
individual rights. For instance, new constitutional provisions
guaranteeing the right to education and expression in "an individual's
language of choice" while maintaining Turkish as the country's official
language, stand a much better chance of finding broad support than
articles bestowing Kurdish with an official status, or granting the
Kurds collective rights.</p>
<p>
Even leading Kurdish nationalists seem to concede that specific
references to Kurdish need not be included in a new constitution.
Instead, sides could agree on a general clause that recognizes Turkey's
cultural diversity as well as the saliency of the Ottoman legacy in
shaping national identity, while looking to the French or Bulgarian
approaches for implementation. This could be supplemented by enshrining
individual rights to linguistic expression, without mentioning specific
languages, and while upholding Turkish as the sole official language.</p>
<p>
The same approach can be used to reform state policy in
Kurdish-majority regions in Turkey, again taking cues from the Bulgarian
and French examples in education. An early step in this direction could
be as simple as providing legal assurances to local politicians who
communicate with constituents in Kurdish or print Kurdish road signs
alongside Turkish. Such steps could develop into the provision of public
services in Kurdish, although this would probably only occur in a
semi-official manner, ‡ la franaise.</p>
<p>
Europe has indeed many lessons for the Turks, including some in Kurdish.</p>
<p>
<em>Soner Cagaptay is the Beyer Family fellow and director of the
Turkish Research Program at The Washington Institute. Tyler Evans is a
research assistant at The Washington Institute.</em></p>
</div><a href="http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/turkeys-kurdish-language-policy-learning-from-europe">http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/turkeys-kurdish-language-policy-learning-from-europe</a><br clear="all">
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