Kurds, Turks, and the Tower of Babel

[Harold Schiffman]

Kurds, Turks, and the Tower of BabelSaturday, April 12, 2008


Forced assimilation was a tragically mistaken policy that Turkey hasfollowed on its Kurdish citizens. But guess from whom the Turks havelearnt that
Mustafa AKYOL
  One of the interesting episodes in Turkey's past week was a quarrelbetween Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Diyarbakır BarPresident Sezgin Tanrıkulu. In a gathering of NGO's and governmentofficials, Mr. Tanrıkulu, an ethnic Kurd, asked from the primeminister "not only economic, but also political reforms" for Turkey'ssoutheast, including the right to "Kurdish education." Erdoğan didn'tlike the idea and, instead, replied with an argument: "Education in amother tongue does not exist anywhere in the world!"   I disagree withMr. Erdoğan on this, and I think his government should consider atleast a form of what Mr. Tanrıkulu had asked for. (Not "education inKurdish," but "education of Kurdish" might be the best formula.) I betmany readers of the Turkish Daily News, especially the ones fromEurope, would also disagree with Mr. Erdoğan, and even express theirdismay in the face of Turkey's unwillingness to grant Kurds the rightto get education in their mother tongue.!
  But one should also see thatthere are reasons to be lenient on Turkey's fixation on the "nationallanguage." It is, after all, something that Turkey not invented, butimported – and from nowhere but good-old Europe.


>>From Babel to Paris:
  In the beginning, mankind had a single language. Or, at least, theBible says so. According to the Book of Genesis, it was God who firstgave a single language to humans. But then, after the Tower of Babelaffair, He created other tongues. "That is why it was called Babel,"says Genesis, "because there the LORD confused the language of thewhole world."  Therefore, from a Judeo-Christian point of view, the existence ofmultiple languages was simply a result of divine will. Islam, not toosurprisingly, confirmed the same wisdom. "Among [God]'s Signs," theKoran declared, "is the creation of the heavens and earth, and thevariety of your languages and colors."   Perhaps that was one reasonwhy different languages and tongues co-existed in the pre-modern,religiously-defined era. Both in Christian Europe and in the IslamicMiddle East, native languages were regarded as a part of the divinelyordained natural order.
  Things started to change with modernity. The modern mind was aconstructivist one – it aimed at re-creating the natural order as itwilled. Yet some moderns, especially the British ones, decided tocarry out this construction in harmony with pre-existing forms. They,after all, respected the natural (or, say, divine) order. Othermoderns, especially the French ones, preferred to destroy all existingtraditions and re-construct everything right from the beginning. Theywere, as they proudly declared, revolutionaries.
  Native languages would be one – only one – of the many victims ofthe revolutionary modernists. Actually in the early stages of theFrench Revolution – that bloody archetype of revolutionary modernism –liberty of language was declared for all citizens of the FrenchRepublic. Yet soon, this policy was abandoned in favor of theimposition of a common language aimed at destroying local tongues. Theideology was expounded in the "Report on The Necessity and Means toAnnihilate The Patois and to Universalize The Use of The FrenchLanguage," written by a Henri Grégoire and presented to the NationalConvention on June 4, 1794.
  From that point on, the French Republic initiated a long war againstthe "non-French" languages and cultures – a policy which lasted untilvery recently, and whose traces arguably still survive. The basic ideabehind "national education" in France has been the eradication ofplurality. After 1918, the use of German in Alsace-Lorraine would beoutlawed. In 1925, Anatole de Monzie, minister of public education,declared, "For the linguistic unity of France, the Breton languagemust disappear." Only in 1964 the French government would allow Bretonon regional television – and only for one and a half minutes. Yet evenin 1972, President Georges Pompidou would autocratically announce,"There is no place for the regional languages and cultures in a Francethat intends to mark Europe deeply."
  France might have been the inventor of forced assimilation, but itwas not its monopolist. "In the 19th and 20th centuries, most Europeanstates conducted politics of forced assimilation against their ethnicand linguistic minorities," reminds Wikipedia. Even Norway, a beaconof peace and good life, carried out a "Norwegianisation process" onits ethnic minorities such as the Sami and the Kven – well up to the1970s. (1972, by the way, was the year that homosexuality wasdecriminalized in Norway.)


Outgrowing nation-building:
  So, when Europeans criticize Turkey's mistakes about its Kurdishcitizens, they should be a little bit restrained. Yes, Turkey hastaken huge missteps on this issue, and it needs fundamental reforms.But the mindset that led Turkey to the denial and forced assimilationof Kurds was not homemade. It was invented and first implemented inEurope.
  Alas, before the arrival and dominance of that idea – i.e.,revolutionary modernism – the Kurds existed in these lands and nobodyforced any assimilation on them. The Ottoman State was a multi-ethnicand multi-religious empire. Pluralism, if you will, was the hallmarkof the Ottomans. Then came the Turkish Republic, whose founders were,unfortunately, inspired by the French way of nation-building. Hencestarted the Kurd's drama.
  Today, the bright future of Turkey lies in its capacity to outgrowthat early revolutionary modernist paradigm. We should not cease beinga modern nation-state, to be sure, but we have to make it more liberaland pluralist. Europeans, of course, should help Turkey's walk on thisthorny path – but do this humbly and patiently. They just should keepin mind how long their liberalization has lasted, and how recentlytheir illiberalism ended.
http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?enewsid=101603

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