[lg policy] Bibliographic item: Incoherent State: The Controversy over Kurdish Naming in TurkeyContents –

[Harold Schiffman]

Incoherent State: The Controversy over Kurdish Naming in TurkeyContents -

This article analyzes contention over Kurdish naming in Turkey. It
explores why there has been increased contention over naming between
Kurdish activists and Turkish state authorities since the 1980s.
First, it underlines the incoherent state responses to the issue of
Kurdish naming and calls attention to the role of the local state
officials in the escalation of naming controversy. In particular, the
paper analyzes the dissonance between the rulings of the Court of
Cassation [Yargıtay] and the local state actors' decisions and
behavior. Second, it discusses the increasing Kurdification campaign
of Kurdish activism and its role in exacerbating contention over
naming.

The Politics of Naming for State and Nation-Building
II. 1980s and 1990s: Official Restrictions on Kurdish Cultural Expressions
III. Mixed State Responses to Kurdish Naming
IV. Post-2000: Further Politicization of Kurdish Naming
Conclusion

PDF:  http://ejts.revues.org/pdf/4142


1 I thank Jason Scheideman, Nicole Watts, the members of the EJTS
editorial board, and the two (...)
2 Radikal, 'Baran, Serhat Yasaklı,' 4 March 2002.
3 Radikal, 'Berivan'ın Yargıcı Şirvan,' 19 April 2002 and Cumhuriyet,
'Şirvan'dan (...)


In 2002, seven parents were taken to the criminal court in Dicle, a
town in the province of Diyarbakır, for giving Kurdish names to their
children1. According to the prosecutor's claim, these names were the
code names used by militants of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK),
and, therefore, were against the Civil Registration Law, which
stipulated that names which do not conform to national culture, moral
norms, customs and traditions and which offend the public could not be
given to children. The case was brought to the attorney's attention by
the Diyarbakır gendarmerie, which investigated the records at the
Registration Office and came up with a list of Kurdish names after the
Ministry of the Interior sent a secret circular, warning local
administrators about an increase in Kurdish naming.2 Ironically, the
court was presided over by a female judge with a Kurdish name, Şirvan.
During the hearings, the prosecutor drew attention to a report sent
from the Turkish Language Society, stating that the names 'did not
conform to Turkish naming habits.' In fact, some of the names in the
list, such as Serhat and Baran were commonly used in Turkey. The
families' attorney underlined that the prosecutor did not have the
right to bring name annulment cases to court. In the end, the judge
recognized the attorney's claim and dismissed the case due to
procedural reasons.3

In Turkey, Kurdish names constitute one of the main issues of cultural
contestation between state authorities and the Kurds. A Kurdish name
ban is widely cited by many scholars as an example of the Turkish
state's repressive policies of assimilation and is condemned by human
rights activists. This article explains why, despite expanding legal
spaces for expressions of Kurdish identity, the issue of Kurdish
naming has become more contentious since the late 1980s. Beginning
with the 1990s, the Turkish government gave signs of relaxing
limitations on the expressions of Kurdish culture. The Kurdish
language ban was lifted in 1991 and many Turkish politicians and
members of the government increasingly acknowledged the need to
recognize Kurdish cultural rights. Mainstream newspapers, which had
largely avoided writing about the Kurds in previous periods, started
to refer to the Kurdish issue more frequently. Political opening
continued in the 2000s. In the post-2000 period, as part of an effort
to meet European Union (EU) membership criteria, the parliament passed
laws that eased restrictions on the use of the Kurdish language in the
media and educational domains. Consequently, broadcasting in Kurdish
in public and private radio and TV stations and teaching Kurdish in
private institutions became legal.

It was, however, in these two decades that state authorities and
parents trying to give their children Kurdish names began challenging
each other more heatedly. Parents encountered problems in their
attempts to register Kurdish names at the registration offices and
were sometimes harassed by authorities. Some Kurds refused to register
their children unless they were allowed to give Kurdish names and
faced administrative problems in the following years. Consequently,
Kurdish naming has become subject to numerous police investigations
and court cases. Why do we see an increased contention over naming
between Kurdish activists and Turkish state authorities at times when
the space for expression of minority identities was expanded? My
answer to this question is twofold, calling attention to the mutually
transformative relationship between state behavior and activist
strategies.

4Part of the answer to this question, I argue, relates to incoherent
state responses to the issue of Kurdish naming. A detailed analysis of
the naming controversy in Turkey suggests that the ban on Kurdish
names was not an absolute and permanent rule that remained valid at
all times across similar cases. Instead, different parts of the
Turkish state formulated and implemented different and contradictory
responses in dealing with the issue of naming. Particularly, I call
attention to the role of local state officials, such as registrars,
public prosecutors, judges, police, and gendarmerie, in the escalation
of naming controversy. The local bureaucracy's insistence on the
Kurdish name ban, despite the consistent rulings of the Court of
Cassation [Yargıtay] against this practice, denoted a subtle
contestation among state actors over how to solve the Kurdish problem.

5Second, increased contention over naming was a consequence of
changing strategies of Kurdish activism. The naming controversy
suggests that earlier policies of Turkification have created their
counterparts within Kurdish activism, which in turn has made
negotiation and compromise more difficult for both sides.
Kurdification of names increasingly became a tool for the creation of
Kurdish nationhood and a symbol for protest against the Turkish state.
Especially in the post-2000 period, Kurdish activists sought to
construct unique Kurdish names through the creation or revival of
names of Kurdish linguistic origin and to mobilize Kurds at large to
adopt these names to distinguish themselves from the general Turkish
public. The recent insistence of activists to register Kurdish names
with letters that do not exist in the official alphabet and the
support of the PKK in such efforts strengthened official perceptions
that Kurdish naming practices were more a tactic of constructing an
exclusivist understanding of Kurdishness than an effort at cultural
preservation and thus met with official resistance. In this article, I
call attention to the mutually transformative relationship between
states and minority strategies. The Kurdish movement did not remain
static in the face of the Turkish state's policies. It evolved and
responded in ways that altered the dynamics of cultural and legal
conflict.

4  For some examples of such approach see Natali (2005), McDowall
(1996), and Hassanpour (1992).
6This case study on the naming controversy suggests a need for a more
contextual, dynamic, and relational understanding of state behavior.
Most analyses of state-Kurdish relations depict the Turkish state as a
unified and coherent actor that imposes a set of rigid and
uncompromising nation-building policies to transform the citizens into
one, specific understanding of Turkishness.4 Such assumption reifies
the state as an integrated unit and ignores the dissonance and
confrontations that take place between different state institutions
and actors. This article draws on the 'state in society' approach
(Migdal et. al. 1994, 2001) and calls attention to the non-monolithic
nature of the Turkish state. As Hansen and Stepputat (2002: 16)
suggest, 'As modern forms of governmentality penetrate and shape human
life in unprecedented ways, the practices and sites of governance have
also become ever more dispersed, diversified, and fraught with
internal inconsistencies and contradictions.' Such heterogeneity of
state responses has a lot to do with the different contexts in which
state institutions operate. Understanding how states respond to an
issue requires going beyond a procedural understanding of policy
making to an analysis of how state institutions and actors interpret
and recreate policies at different levels.

7In the first section, I provide a brief discussion of why states
interfere in naming practices along with a short history of the
Turkish state's policy of naming. In the second section, I briefly
discuss the legal restrictions on Kurdish cultural expressions after
the start of the armed conflict in the 1980s and 1990s. In the third
section, I examine how the naming issue became more contentious at the
end of the 1980s with the escalation of the armed conflict between the
PKK and the Turkish military. I show how state agents, particularly
local officials such as registrars, public prosecutors, judges,
police, and gendarmerie who worked in the conflict-ridden Kurdish
areas came to perceive any expression of Kurdishness as a political
symbol in support of the PKK. I also examine the decisions of the
Turkish Court of Cassation, which is the appeals court of last resort,
with regards to personal naming practices and discuss how the local
state institutions frequently ignored its consistent rulings against
the ban on Kurdish names. I argue that the local bureaucracy's
insistence on the ban, despite the rulings of the Court of Cassation,
played a crucial role in instigating the naming conflict and
facilitating the growing politicization of personal naming practices
among the Kurds. In the final, fourth section, I discuss this cultural
contention within the context of the EU reforms and the increasing
Kurdification campaign of the Kurdish movement.

I. The Politics of Naming for State and Nation-Building  8States'
interference in personal naming practices is inextricably linked to
modern state formation and establishment of direct rule. Collection of
taxes, imposition of conscription, institutionalizing a standard legal
system and property regime, and establishing a system of universal
citizenship entail expansion of state control over daily lives of its
citizens. As Scott et al. (2002) emphasize states' efforts to impose
direct rule over their populations necessitates increased social
legibility: 'The modern state- by which we mean a state whose ideology
encompasses large-scale plans for the improvement of the population's
welfare- requires at least two forms of legibility to be able to
achieve its mission. First, it requires the capacity to locate
citizens uniquely and unambiguously. Second, it needs standardized
information that will allow it to create aggregate statistics about
property, income, health, demography, productivity, etc.' (Scott et.
al. 2002: 10). One of the ways states increase the legibility of their
populations is through assigning each individual a fixed and
hereditary surname.

5  I discussed state's efforts to detribalize the Kurdish regions and
to makeover the Kurdish (...)
6  This practice was also confirmed by some of my interviewees in
Southeastern Anatolia.
7  For more on the Surname Law and the negotiations between citizens
and state officials during the (...)
9The Surname Law that was passed in 1934 in Turkey indicates such
state efforts to identify each individual as a legal person. This law
required each citizen to adopt a family name. It also brought certain
restrictions on the types of surnames that can be adopted. These
restrictions suggested that the state's aim to impose a surname law
went beyond a purely administrative motive. The Turkish state also
considered the law as an agent of social makeover to mold citizens
into a homogeneous, national unit. First, the law was used as a tool
for detribalization. The Republican regime considered tribes as signs
of backwardness and tribal leaders as centers of power that could
challenge the expansion of state authority in the countryside. Tribes
were seen as communities that stood in the way between states and
citizens; they were obstacles to establishing direct state rule.5 The
Surname Law forbade surnames that were related to tribes. Hüseyin Koca
(1998: 132) writes that sons of some tribal leaders were given
different last names than their fathers' and that each son received a
separate last name to break up the tribal structure, which was quite
strong especially in the Kurdish and Arabic-speaking areas of Eastern
and Southeastern Anatolia.6 Nevertheless, no systematic data is
available on how extensive this practice was. At best, the practice
had been uneven and incomplete. Sometimes large landowning families
and tribes could keep their established names, by which they were
known if they were powerful enough to influence the local officials.7

8  For more on the language policies of the early Turkish Republic,
see Çolak (2004) and Sadoğlu (...)
10Second, the Surname Law was meant to foster a sense of Turkishness
within society and prohibited surnames that were related to foreign
ethnicities and nations. Policy of naming has been a conventional tool
for states to construct a new national tradition and identity. It can
be a mechanism for ethnic segregation or assimilation (Scassa 1996:
174-175). Domestically, Turkish policy aimed at the latter. The
Surname Law was a tool for the creation of Turkish national identity
and an ethnically indistinguishable citizenry. Nevertheless, at a
global scale, it also intended to draw clear-cut boundaries of
Turkishness, separating Turkey from the other Muslim nations. The new
language policy of the early Turkish Republic promoted the development
of purified Turkish to establish a radical break with the Ottoman past
and to construct a secular national identity.8 A regulatory statue on
surnames that was prepared by the Council of Ministers after the law
required surnames to be taken from words of Turkish origin.

11Although there was no legal requirement for the Turkification of
first names, personal naming practices were also influenced by the new
language policy. There was already a media campaign before the Surname
Law that promoted the replacement of personal and geographical names
of Arabic and Persian origin with pure Turkish names (Sadoğlu 2003:
257). Unlike non-Muslims, who conventionally used different names than
the Muslims at the time, there was no distinct separation between
Kurdish and Turkish names. Both ethnic communities used to give
traditional Muslim names, which were predominantly Arabic and Persian,
to their children. With the new Turkification trend, both Turks and
Kurds increasingly began to give pure Turkish names to their children.
Naci Kutlay (1997: 311-312), a prominent Kurdish intellectual and
activist, notes that during the first few decades of the Republic,
many Kurds, especially those who lived in urban areas, gave their
children pure Turkish names and names that were reminiscent of Central
Asia or Turkish history. Bulliet (1978: 494) writes that the use of
Turkish names slowly but steadily increased among the population at
large since the establishment of the Republic. Especially non-Muslim
minorities felt more pressure to Turkify their names in order not to
encounter any discrimination. Türköz (2007) writes that as recognized
minorities, the Jewish, Armenian, and Greek communities were not
legally required to change their names, but this was not made explicit
in the law. Many non-Muslim citizens 'chose to divest their names of
explicit markers of their ethnic affiliation. Changes in minority
names were made in several ways: by cutting off an ending that marked
the name as ethnic, by maintaining one syllable of the old name and
adapting the name to Turkish, by adopting a fairly innocuous name such
as Çiçek, or, in one case, a complete translation of a name' (Türköz
2007: 901).

9  For a detailed analysis of changes in place names during the
Republican period, see Öktem (...)
10 Türkiye Mülki İdare Bölümleri, 1 Kasım 1980 durumu, İçişleri
Bakanlığı, Genel Yayın (...)
12The Turkification trend also paved the way for a large-scale
toponymical engineering.9  Not only non-Turkish geographical names
that suggested the existence of different ethnic communities within
Turkey's boundaries but also those that contained some reference to
particular religious or traditional structures and to the old regime
began to be changed in the early Turkish Republic. To cite an example,
a village named Kürtşeyh [Kurdish Sheikh] was divested of its ethnic
connotation and took a neutral name of Çiçektepe [Flowerhill]. Over
the years until 1980, the names of 67 percent of subdistricts and 63
percent of villages were changed in Southeastern and Eastern Turkey10.
This was followed by another wave of renaming during the military rule
after the 1980 coup. Renaming of places emphasized Turkish claims of
ownership to these geographic areas and sought to recreate their
inhabitants' sense of space in accordance with the official
nationalist ideology. Most importantly, through acts of renaming the
Turkish state underlined the extent of its power over its citizens.

13As Scassa (1996: 172) discusses, states regulate the use of surnames
more closely than personal names because fixation of surnames is
crucial for modern state building as it helps institutionalize a
standard legal system and property regime. Thus, individuals cannot
change their surnames as easily as they can change their first names.
States' interest in the regulation of personal names, nevertheless,
has been more sporadic and contextual. In Turkey, too, the state's
intervention in the parents' choice of names for their children has
been uneven and directly correlated with efforts to invigorate a
common national identity. Official restrictions in personal naming
practices emerged at times when perceptions of threat against national
unity increased within the state circles. It was after the 1980s, with
the escalation of the armed conflict between the Kurdish insurgency
and the Turkish army, that state officials came to be more selective
with regard to personal naming practices.

11  Tanrıkulu was the president of the Bar Association in Diyarbakır
and is the regional (...)
12  Interview with Sezgin Tanrıkulu, Radikal, 25 August 2003.
13  My impression is that demand for distinctively Kurdish names was
also lower in the pre-1980 (...)
14The first attempt to regulate the choice of first names came with
the 1972 Registration Law. Article 16/4 of the law stipulated that
names which do not conform to national culture, moral norms, customs
and traditions and which offend the public could not be given to
children. It was left to the discretion of officials working at the
registration offices to decide whether a name ran counter to the
'national culture' or not. Sezgin Tanrıkulu, a prominent human rights
attorney based in Diyarbakır,11 argued that before the military coup
in 1980, Kurds could have given Kurdish names to their children. He
called attention to the prevalence of many Kurdish names such as
Berfin, Helin, Hazal, Baran, and Kendal, which could have been
officially registered. 12 Some of the Kurdish activists whom I
interviewed confirmed this and pointed out that negotiating with state
officials working in the registration offices over a Kurdish name
could be possible before the 1980s. A disagreement over a name was
usually resolved during such negotiation, without having to go to a
judicial process.13

II. 1980s and 1990s: Official Restrictions on Kurdish Cultural
Expressions15The 1980 military coup has become a turning point in
state-Kurdish relations in Turkey, and it was after this date that the
issue of naming became increasingly politicized.  The emergence of
Kurdish groups that advocated self-determination and the formation of
the PKK at the end of the 1970s convinced the military that separatism
was an imminent and a serious threat that should be stopped, at any
cost. The military rule that lasted from 1980 to 1983 interpreted any
manifestation of Kurdishness, from speaking the Kurdish language to
listening to Kurdish music, as a challenge against national integrity
and did not tolerate it. The repressive measures that the military
rule undertook during this period played a significant role in the
radicalization of the Kurdish masses (Bozarslan 2001: 46-47). The
state policies of this period were also crucial in politicizing the
use of the Kurdish language and bringing the language issue to the
core of cultural contestation that would last for the years to come.
For instance, the infamous Law 2932, which came into effect towards
the end of the military rule in 1983, banned the use of the Kurdish
language in public and private.14 The second article of the law
stated, 'No language can be used for the explication, dissemination,
and publication of ideas other than the first official language of
countries, recognized by the Turkish state.' The law was carefully
formulated to make Kurdish its sole target but never mentioned the
word 'Kurdish,' as it would mean the official acknowledgement of the
existence of the Kurdish language. The law also prohibited the spread
of any language, other than Turkish, as the mother tongue. Until its
repeal in 1991, the law was used to justify probations,
interrogations, and litigations against those who spoke, sang, or
published in Kurdish.15

14  For the full text of the law, see 'Türkçeden Baska Dillerde
Yapılacak Yayınlar Hakkında (...)
15  According to the official statistics, between 1986 and 1991, 115
court cases were opened and 189 (...)
16  Interview with Sezgin Tanrıkulu, Radikal, 25 August 2003.
17  See Cemal (2003) for detailed accounts of positions by different
state actors on the Kurdish (...)
16It was in the contentious environment of the 1980s that Kurdish
names have been increasingly seen as subversive of national culture
and banned at the local registration offices. According to Sezgin
Tanrıkulu, the military regime, which was in power between 1980 and
1983, sent a list of Kurdish names to the registration offices and
banned these names.16 Transition to multi-party politics in 1983 did
not lead to a relaxation of the policies restricting Kurdish cultural
practices. The emergence of the PKK and the start of the Kurdish armed
resistance increased the state's intolerance towards expressions of
Kurdishness. The armed conflict also led to a gradual politicization
of Kurdish cultural elements, such as music, dress, language, and
celebrations, which curtailed the state's willingness to relax
cultural measures. For instance, a genre of Kurdish music developed
that glorified and propagated armed struggle and self-determination.
Newroz, known as the New Year that marks the first day of spring
around March 21, became a more public and political event that
symbolized Kurdish resistance against state repression. The PKK also
used Newroz as a means to propagate and conduct violence. Its
celebrations led to violent conflicts between state security forces
and Kurdish activists from time to time (Yanık 2006: 287). Such
politicization strengthened the hardliners' position within the state,
particularly the military's. The hardliners tended to see the Kurdish
cultural demands as a subtle prelude to autonomy and eventually
territorial secession. Although the end of the 1980s brought a debate
among politicians, members of civil society organizations, and
intellectuals about how to solve the Kurdish problem through
non-military means, relaxation of legal restrictions on Kurdish
cultural expressions proved to be a difficult matter.17

18  For more on the debates see 'Kürtçeye Özgürlük,' Nokta, 3 June 1990.
17By the beginning of the 1990s, the government began to relax some of
the major restrictions on expressions of Kurdish culture. The infamous
Law 2932, which banned the Kurdish language in public and private, was
lifted in April 1991.18 The following December, Deputy Prime Minister
Erdal İnönü argued that Kurdish citizens should enjoy their cultural
identity in full. On March 1991, the Minister of Culture issued a
directive allowing for the celebration of Newroz, the Kurdish New
Year, all over the country. The following year the Prime Minister
Süleyman Demirel announced that he recognized the Kurdish ethnic
presence. President Turgut Özal, in particular, took important steps
in an attempt to solve the problem through non-military means. In
January 1990, he approved the compulsory jurisdiction of the European
Court of Human Rights, which since then has become a crucial appeal
mechanism for Kurdish activists. He also announced that he was partly
Kurdish, argued for Kurdish broadcasting on state television, tried to
form informal contacts with the Kurdish leaders, stated that a federal
system could solve the Kurdish problem, and advocated the preparation
of an amnesty law for the PKK fighters (Ataman 2002).

19  I discuss how local state officials recreated many of the
linguistic restrictions even after the (...)
18Such liberalization also had an effect on bringing the Kurdish issue
into the public debate. As Somer (2004: 246) states, 'Beginning in
1991, not only did the number of articles escalate drastically, but
also a large percentage of the articles began to use 'Kurd,'
indicating that the discursive categories that the journalists were
using in describing similar events were in transition.' In a country
in which officials almost never used the word 'Kurd' and identified
the Kurdish issue as a problem of regional backwardness or terrorism,
these were drastic changes. As Yeğen (2007: 137) notes, Kurdish
resistance pushed Turkish nationalists to publicly recognize the
existence of a separate Kurdish identity, which they had denied for
decades. This recognition, nevertheless, was uneven at different
levels of the state. In other words, there was no integrated state
response towards such liberalization. Attempts to reduce tensions by
easing the restrictions on Kurdish linguistic and cultural practices
failed to produce the desired impact on the ground. Resistance to
cultural policy change by state officials working at the local levels
has played a considerable role in instigating further cultural and
symbolic conflict. For instance, even after Law 2932 was lifted in
1991, most of the restrictions on the use of the Kurdish language
remained de facto in force, largely because the abolition of the law
did not influence the behavior of the local state cadres.19

III. Mixed State Responses to Kurdish Naming 19An analysis of the
Kurdish naming controversy since the 1980s demonstrates the incoherent
nature of state policies in Turkey. The naming controversy underlines
how parts of the state -the military, bureaucracy, political parties,
government, and judiciary along with their representatives at the
lower levels of the state in local areas- formulated and implemented
different and sometimes conflicting responses in their attempts to
deal with the Kurdish problem. The continuing controversy over Kurdish
naming seems in part to be due to local officials' reluctance to
recognize Kurdish names, and, more generally, their reluctance to make
concessions to the idea of 'Kurdish rights.' Specifically, it was the
local registrars, public prosecutors, judges, police, and gendarmerie
who played significant roles in escalating the naming controversy.

20  See the articles 'Zozan oldu Suzan,' Nokta, 15 February 1987, pp.
16-18 and 'Zozanların (...)
20In some cases, Kurdish names came to be targets of the local police
and prosecutor. In February 1987, for instance, the weekly news
magazine Nokta reported that the Office of the Public Prosecutor in
Bitlis brought twelve people to court, charging them with giving
Kurdish names to their children. The judicial process started after
the Bitlis chief of police conducted a survey of the names registered
in the public registration office and wrote a report about local
naming practices to the office of the public prosecutor. In this
report the police chief wrote that the majority of the population
living in Bitlis conserved their local characteristics, that they
continued to speak their local language, and that they gave their
children Kurdish names. Before the public prosecutor in Bitlis charged
the parents, he asked for an opinion from the Ministry of the
Interior. As a result, the Ministry prepared a committee of experts
composed of two administrators from the General Directorate of
Population and Citizenship Affairs. The report written by the
committee underlined that the names were not Turkish and added, 'Over
the long term, the names given to children are very important for our
national unity and social structure. Therefore, names given to
children should have a character that unites society.' The report also
drew attention to the Article 16/4 of the Registration Law, which
stipulated that names which do not conform to the national culture,
moral norms, customs, and traditions and which offend the public
cannot be given to children. As a result of this report from the
Ministry of the Interior, the public prosecutor applied to the court
to annul the Kurdish names. After 10 months of the first hearing in
court, the judges decided to drop the case for procedural reasons,
claiming that public prosecutors could not open court cases to annul
registered names. This ruling was in conformity with a previous
decision of the Court of Cassation, which stipulated that a name's
non-Turkish origin could not be a justification for its annulment. 20
Neither the decision of the court in Bitlis nor the earlier decision
of the Court of Cassation, however, could serve as precedents and
prevent name annulment cases from being opened in the Kurdish regions
in the following years.

21  See 'Resmi bir itiraf: Kürtler azınlıktır,' Nokta, 19 June 1988, pp. 22-23.
21Often it was the officials in public registration offices in Kurdish
cities who played a critical role in instigating the contestations
over naming. In 1988, the registration office in Midyat issued a
criminal complaint about a parent who gave his children Kurdish names,
Valat and Baver. According to the registrars, these names were not in
conformity with the national culture, customs, and traditions and,
therefore, should be erased from the registration records. The civil
court of Midyat asked an opinion from the Ministry of the Interior's
General Directorate of Population and Citizenship Affairs. This time
the General Directorate's interpretation conflicted with its report in
the previous year. While it underlined that the names were not of
Turkish origin, it called attention to the Lausanne Treaty and stated
that people who belonged to minority groups in Turkey had the right to
give foreign names to their children. Accordingly, the family in
question could be considered as belonging to a minority and that the
children's names were common among people who constituted a minority
community in Eastern Turkey. This was one of the very rare instances
that an official institution recognized the Kurdish population as a
minority in Turkey. In fact, the opinion was based on an incorrect
interpretation of the Lausanne Treaty, which recognized only the
non-Muslim Turkish citizens as minority groups. In accordance with the
answer sent from the Ministry of the Interior, the local civil court
of Midyat ruled that the Kurdish names of the children could not be
changed.21 While the decision of the Midyat court paralleled the
decision of the court in Bitlis a year ago, its legal justification
was different.

22  More information about the Turkish Court of Cassation can be found
at www.yargıtay.gov.tr. The (...)
23  The following are a few case examples that involved non-Kurdish
names. It was the 18th Civil (...)
22A survey of the Court of Cassation [Yargıtay] decisions concerning
naming clearly shows the dissonance between state institutions at
different levels and how the issue became more controversial in the
Kurdish localities in the 1990s. In Turkey, the Court of Cassation is
the court of appeals of last resort and reviews the decisions of the
lower courts to ensure standardization in the legal practice. If the
Court of Cassation does not agree with a decision, it annuls the
decision of the lower court and remands the case to the lower court.
If the lower court insists on its previous decision, the General
Assembly of the Court of Cassation concludes appellate review on the
lower court's judgment and makes the final decision on the case.22
Since the 1980s, the Court of Cassation's decisions with regards to
taking non-Turkish names have been consistently liberal. In all the
cases about naming, Kurdish or other foreign names,23 the court ruled
that individuals were free to take any name, unless the meaning of the
name was insulting, humiliating, or profane. Such rulings, however,
were hardly taken into consideration by the local bureaucratic circles
in the conflict-ridden Kurdish areas. For state agents who served in
the local areas of the conflict, banning Kurdish names became a way to
assert state authority over the very private details of Kurds' lives,
at times when many such officials felt their authority was being
threatened.

24  Yargıtay İlamı, T.C. Yargıtay 3. Hukuk Dairesi, Esas no: 8859,
Karar no: 516.
23In 1990, for instance, the Court of Cassation overruled a decision
of a lower civil court, which ruled that the parents involved should
annul the Kurdish name, 'Berivan,' that they had given their child and
registered officially. The Court of Cassation rejected the ruling
based on several reasons. It ruled that, procedurally, name annulment
cases could not be opened in courts either by public prosecutors or by
registration offices but that only individuals could apply to courts
in order to change their names. The court also stated that, since
naming their children is a right of parents, no individual could be
stripped of a name by a court decision according to the main
principles of human rights. In addition, it found the lower court's
explanation inadequate as to why the name, 'Berivan,' did not conform
to the national culture, customs, and traditions.24

24During the 1990s, the Court of Cassation also issued rulings on a
number of cases that involved individuals who wanted to change their
Turkish names to Kurdish. In the 1990s, with the intensification of
the armed conflict and the popular spread of Kurdish nationalism, more
Kurds wanted to take distinctive Kurdish names and used the Turkish
court system to seek their rights. The lower courts in general were
not empathetic to such demands and rejected the plaintiffs' demands on
the grounds that the names were not Turkish. A fewer number of these
plaintiffs could appeal their cases to the Court of Cassation. In all
these cases, the court of last resort consistently ruled that personal
names do not have to be of Turkish origin. For instance, in 1993, the
Court of Cassation cancelled a lower court's decision that refused a
parent's demand to change his daughter's name from 'Berrin' into a
Kurdish name, 'Berfin.' While the lower court refused this demand on
the grounds that the name was not Turkish, the Court of Cassation
issued the following ruling:

25  Yargıtay İlamı, T.C. Yargıtay 18. Hukuk Dairesi, Esas no: 9708,
Karar no: 0832, 13 October (...)
25According to the stated clause of the law, names which do not
conform to national culture, moral norms, customs and traditions and
which offend the public cannot be given. Although the court rejected
the case based on this clause, the justification was based on a
photocopy of a text that was written by the chairman of the editorial
board of the Turkish Language Society [Türk Dil Kurumu] to the
Ministry of the Interior. The aforementioned chairman's opinion that
giving the name 'Berfin' to Turkish children would be contrary to the
national culture, moral norms, customs and traditions because of its
foreign origins cannot be a justification for a court decision. Why
the word 'Berfin' does not conform to our traditions and cannot be
given as a name to Turkish children unlike names that are commonly
used in our society such as Pervin, Nermin, Şermin, Berin, and the
like should be explained thoroughly in a way that would leave no
doubts. 25

26  Yargıtay İlamı, T.C. Yargıtay 18. Hukuk Dairesi, Esas no:
1994/7386, Karar no: 1994/8560, 21 (...)
26As a result, the Court of Cassation annulled the decision of the
lower court. A year later, in a very similar case, the Court of
Cassation overruled another lower court's decision that did not allow
a woman to change her name from Songül to Rojda. In this case too, the
lower court based its decision on an opinion that came from the
Turkish Language Society. The Court of Cassation, nevertheless, did
not find such opinion adequate and made a decision based on the
meaning of the name and whether or not the individual was known within
the society by the name he/she wanted to take. Unless the meaning of
the name was insulting, defamatory or profane, the Court of Cassation
ruled that the lower courts did not have the right to deny that name
to the individual, even though the name was not Turkish.26

27  Only once in the court's decision the name's Kurdish origin is
acknowledged. In the rest of (...)
28  T.C. Yargıtay Hukuk Genel Kurulu, Esas no: 1999/18-966, Karar no:
1999/1010, 1 December 1999. (...)
27One important controversial case was seen in 1999. A father, whose
daughter's name was 'Hatice,' applied to the Court of Cassation to
challenge the lower court's refusal to change her name into Kurdish,
'Mizgin.' The lower court denied the name change to Mizgin on the
grounds that it did not exist in the Turkish language and stated that
it had Persian (Kurdish) 27 origin. The court referred to the opinion
of a Turkish language and literature professor, who stated that the
name had different and contradictory meanings, one of which could be
considered insulting. According to the expert's opinion, the name
could mean 'guest, dining table, hospitable, clean, and urine,'
depending on the way it was spelled in Persian. One of the reasons why
the lower civil court found the name objectionable was because of its
meaning of 'urine.' The plaintiff, however, stated that it meant 'good
news' in his regional language. The Court of Cassation found the lower
court's decision appropriate and approved it. Nevertheless, the
decision did not come as a result of a consensus. In his dissenting
opinion, one judge stated that it would not be right to ban the name
Mizgin because it was used commonly in the plaintiff's region, that
people's lifestyles in this region could not be considered as distinct
from the Turkish culture, and that the plaintiff had the right to
choose a lifestyle from the milieu that he lived in. He also called
attention to the commonness of non-Turkish names within Turkish
society and expressed his skepticism about the objectivity of the
expert's opinion on the name's meaning.28

28In 2000, the plaintiff applied to the Court of Cassation for a
reexamination of the case. This time the General Assembly of the Court
of Cassation found the expert's opinion inadequate and subjective. It
issued a ruling in favor of the father and stated:

29'First we should note that the fourth clause of the Article 16 of
the Registration Law was not written to purify Turkish from words of
foreign origin but to avert people from giving names that do not
conform to the national culture, moral norms, customs and traditions.
Eastern and Southeastern Anatolia is a part of the motherland, where,
not only a particular ethnic group, but people with different ethnic
origins live as part of our country's reality.'

29  T.C. Yargıtay Hukuk Genel Kurulu, Esas no: 2000/18-127, Karar no:
2000/154, 1 March 2000.
30The court acknowledged that many of the names used in Turkey are of
Arabic and Persian origin and are ingrained in Turkish culture and
traditions. It was convinced by the father's claim that the child is
commonly called as 'Mizgin' by her family and friends and that the
name is commonly used in the region where the family resided. As its
final decision the court ruled that the father had legitimate reasons
to change his daughter's name.29

30  Interview with a Kurdish activist. Also see Türkiye İnsan Hakları
Vakfı (1993): Örneklerle (...)
31  T.C. Malatya İdare Mahkemesi, Esas no: 1999/1204, Karar no:
2000/335, 11 April 2000. For the (...)
31As the different court cases indicate, the attitude of different
state institutions towards Kurdish naming was neither monolithic nor
consistent. To ensure nationwide unity in implementation, the Ministry
of the Interior sent separate circulars in 1986, 1990, and 1992
stating that officials in registration offices should register names
of parents' choice. The circulars also specified that if a name was
considered objectionable, registrars should first consult the Ministry
before informing the public prosecutor.30 Nevertheless, state
registrars continued to refuse to register Kurdish names, the
gendarmerie searched for Kurdish names to inform legal authorities,
and local public prosecutors occasionally filed suits against parents
who gave Kurdish names to their children. In addition, disregarding
the highest court's previous decisions on the issue, many local courts
continued to interpret the Article 16/4 of the Registration Law as a
ban against Kurdish names. For example, in 1998, the Elazığ
registration office refused a father's demand to register his child's
name as 'Laşer Rodi.' The administrative court of Malatya approved the
registration office's claim two years later. In an interview, the
father stated that although his grandmothers' Kurdish names were
officially registered, he was not able to register his child's name
for the five years since his birth.31

32This study did not try to methodically study the motives for local
officials' relatively conservative reactions to national-level legal
reforms loosening restrictions on Kurdish cultural expression.
However, it is plausible that they resisted national policymakers'
reform efforts for several reasons. First, it is likely that some
officials toughened their behavior because of the harsh circumstances
of the war, which made them less tolerant of cultural practices and
symbols of Kurdishness. Some blamed local people for their distress
related to the everyday risks of war, came to associate almost every
element of Kurdish culture with separatism, and thus were little
inclined to accommodate Kurdish cultural expressions or to distinguish
between non-politicized and politicized forms of such expressions.
Second, the authority of the military-bureaucratic apparatus on the
ground was strengthened by several governmental decrees during the
fight against the PKK, which increased extralegal and arbitrary
practices of local state officials in the region. Finally, unlike the
parliamentarians and the members of the government, these local
officials were largely insulated from international pressures for the
improvement of human rights.

33As the naming controversy suggests, the Turkish state has not been a
coherent and unitary actor in dealing with the Kurdish issue. Instead,
ideological or normative disagreements as well as different contexts
in which state actors operated mattered in the different
interpretation and implementation of laws and policies. As Joel Migdal
(2001: 116-117) points out, the state may not generate a single
response to an issue or problem: 'Rather, its outcomes -the
formulation and implementation of its policies- are a series of
different actions based on the particular calculus of pressures that
each engaged component of the state faces in its particular
environment of action ....The outcome can just as likely be a sum of
ill-fitting responses that stem from the different components of the
state as they respond to their various arenas of domination and
opposition.' These contradictory responses that state institutions and
actors had given to similar situations, nevertheless, reduced the
credibility of the future policy changes in the eyes of the Kurds and
further contributed to the politicization of the naming issue. In the
post-2000 period, Kurdish naming became a tool for activists to
express their protest against reforms which they perceived to be
merely cosmetic.

IV. Post-2000: Further Politicization of Kurdish Naming 34At the time
of the most substantial language policy change in Turkish Republican
history, the Kurdish naming controversy escalated once more in the
2000s. A substantial transformation in state policy came after the
capture of Abdullah Öcalan, the leader of the PKK, in Kenya in
February 1999. After his capture, the PKK, which renamed itself first
as KADEK (the Kurdistan Freedom and Democracy Congress) and later as
Kongra-Gel (People's Congress), declared a five-year unilateral
ceasefire that led to a dramatic reduction of armed clashes in the
years to come. At the end of 1999, another significant development
took place. The Helsinki meeting of the European Council, held on
December 1999, took key decisions on the enlargement of the European
Union and declared Turkey a candidate. The prospect of becoming a full
member of the EU and the decline in PKK's armed operations created a
suitable conjuncture that put pressure on the government to address
the issue of human rights and to undertake reforms that would have
important consequences for the Kurdish demands. Between 2001 and 2003,
the Turkish Parliament passed seven sets of reform packages that
encompassed constitutional and legal amendments to meet the EU
membership criteria.32 These amendments also addressed some of the
long-awaited Kurdish demands for cultural rights. In August 2002, a
change in the Law on the Teaching of Foreign Languages abolished the
ban on teaching Kurdish in private classes. Another important
improvement with regards to Kurdish cultural rights came with the
amendment to the broadcasting law, which allowed for 'broadcasting in
different languages and dialects Turkish citizens traditionally use in
their daily lives.'33 This amendment opened the way for broadcasting
in Kurdish in public and private radio and TV stations. Despite many
implementation problems on the ground, the legal changes removed many
restrictions on the use of the Kurdish language.

32  For more on the reform packages see Oran (2004).
33  For detailed information on the recent reforms that related to
state-minority relations in (...)
34  For this resolution see http://www.kurdistan (...)
35  '40 Yıllık Kani Oldu Kürt İsmi,' Hürriyet, 29 January 2002.
36  Kurban (2003: 196); 'Kanun Değisti, Kafa Değişmedi,' Radikal, 1
September 2003; and see (...)
37  'Rojhat'a dava açıldı,' Özgür Politika, 11 October 2002. See
http://www.savaskars to (...)
38  'Oğluna Robin Adını Koyamadı,' Cumhuriyet, 16 October 2002.
39  'Yine Kürtçe Yine Yasak,' Radikal, 30 May 2002.
40  For more information on the official circular about naming and the
several cases in this period, (...)
35The expansions of Kurdish linguistic rights coincided with changing
Kurdish strategies. In 2002, the PKK declared that it promoted
political uprising as a solution to the Kurdish problem. As Romano
(2006: 144) points out, the discourse of the Kurdish insurgency
shifted to the language of human rights, democracy, and
multiculturalism as its military strength weakened and as it needed to
attract greater European and international support. In its 8th
congress, the PKK announced KADEK as its only legitimate
representative and declared its decision to undertake political
actions of civil disobedience.34 Only a few months before this
announcement, one of the major newspapers in Turkey, Hürriyet,
reported that the Turkish intelligence agencies warned the government
about the PKK's decision to begin a Kurdish naming campaign as part of
its new civil disobedience strategy. Accordingly, the PKK would
mobilize people to apply to courts to replace their Turkish names with
Kurdish names as a way to create the Kurdish nation.35 In May 2002,
the Ministry of the Interior sent a secret circular warning to local
administrators about a possible increase in Kurdish naming and asked
them to ensure that parents name their children in accordance with the
registration law. The circular granted governors wide discretion over
decisions about Kurdish naming without specifying how this authority
should be used.36 This process started another wave of contention
between state officials and the Kurds. Any demand for a Kurdish name
was interpreted by state officials to be in line with the demands of
the PKK and could be perceived as a crime. The Registration Office in
Mersin took a family to court for giving the name Rojhat to their
child.37 A lawyer who wanted to give the name Robin to his newborn son
could not register it in Diyarbakır.38 In Ardahan, two fathers who
wanted to give Kurdish names to their sons were sent to the State
Security Court on the charges of separatism and supporting a terrorist
organization through propaganda. The case was dismissed when the
fathers' relationship with the PKK could not be established.39 In
Diyarbakır, after surveying the civil registry records, the
gendarmerie prepared a list of 600 Kurdish names and sent it to the
office of the public prosecutor, which immediately started
investigations. In the gendarmerie's document it was written that the
campaign for Kurdish naming was part of the PKK's attempts of
political struggle and that those who insisted on giving Kurdish names
to their children acted in accordance with the PKK's directives.
Similarly, in Izmir nine people who gave Kurdish names to their
children were taken to court for supporting the PKK. According to the
Turkish Human Rights Foundation, a total of 76 name annulment cases
were brought to the courts in the year 2002. 40

41  For more on the EU reforms and practice see Kurban (2003) and Aslan (2008).
36The mobilization of both state officials and the Kurds with regards
to naming in the post-2000 period underlines the difficulty of
reconciliation, even at the cultural and symbolic level, after periods
of armed conflict. Ross (2007) emphasizes the importance of
'psychocultural interpretations' in playing a causal role in ethnic
conflicts. As Ross argues, parties to the conflict do not act in a
vacuum. Their interpretations of new phases in a conflict are
conditioned by their preexisting beliefs, experiences, and narratives:
'The ambiguity of most events means they can be interpreted in
different ways, and to deal with this ambiguity groups turn to readily
available interpretations and narratives that then shape subsequent
behavior. This, of course, is what makes ethnic conflict so difficult
to contain and manage and why ambiguous events are selectively
interpreted as confirming evidence for preexisting beliefs.
Furthermore, since many disputes involve parties with a long history
of conflict, older grievances are easily appended to newer ones as
political conditions warrant.' (Ross 2007: 25). In Turkey, the history
of armed conflict prevented most state actors from seeing Kurdish
rights as a neutral category of minority rights, even after the
decline in armed clashes. Rather, the Kurdish demands for recognition
of difference have been predominantly perceived as demands for
national self-determination. Especially for the local bureaucracy and
the military that had firsthand experience of the war, the pro-EU
reforms that began to lift restrictions on the use of Kurdish meant
conceding to the demands of the Kurdish insurgency through outside
pressure. For instance, the resistance of the military and the
bureaucracy to the expansion of the cultural and linguistic space for
expressions of Kurdishness was quite apparent in the cases of Kurdish
broadcasting and private Kurdish teaching. Many human rights activists
have emphasized the bureaucratic complications that undercut the
implementation of many of the reforms and the gap between legislation
and actual practice.41

37Another process that underlined the difficulty of cultural
reconciliation involved the changing strategies of Kurdish activism.
The pro-Kurdish activists' efforts to mobilize the Kurdish masses
around naming were a consequence of the new cultural-linguistic turn
in the movement's strategies. With the expansion of the legal-cultural
space, the post-2000 period has seen renewed efforts to develop the
Kurdish language and literature, to increase the volume of Kurdish
publications, and to do research on Kurdish history and culture. In
this process, Kurdish activism also expanded its focus to cultural and
symbolic contestation, which aimed at defining Kurdishness by
differentiating itself from Turkishness. For the Kurdish activists,
names increasingly became a tool for the symbolic creation of Kurdish
nationhood. Prominent Kurdish activist Naci Kutlay (1997: 327-328)
states, 'The identity search and struggle in recent years showed
itself, primarily and in its simplest form, in the use of Kurdish
names. Everybody looks for a Kurdish name for his/her children, more
distinctly in the cities with high Kurdish population density and less
so in villages, and they take care that these names be meaningful and
pure Kurdish. Names chosen from Kurdish history and geography began to
be used, replacing the old traditional names. At the same time these
names indicate the families' patriotic character, advocating Kurdish
identity.' As stated earlier, many Kurds and Turks used to share
similar Muslim names in the past. Kurdish activists' naming campaign
in the post-2000 era, nevertheless, increasingly took a nationalist,
exclusivist character, aiming to construct a clear-cut boundary
between Turkishness and Kurdishness, and thus played a role in
complicating the reconciliation process.

42  For more see the 2002, 2003, and 2004 annual reports of the
Turkish Human Rights Foundation at ww(...)
43  Yargıtay Ilami, T.C. Yargıtay 18. Hukuk Dairesi, Esas
no:2004/3398, Karar no:2004/4808, 25 (...)
44  See the annual reports of the Turkish Human Rights Foundation
after 2003 at www.tihv.org.tr.   (...)
45  'İşte Küçük Kürdistan,' Radikal, 28 October 2009.
38 In June 2003, the Turkish Parliament changed Article 16 of the
Registration Law to minimize contradictory interpretations of the
article and to put an end to the naming controversy. The article,
which stipulated that children could not be given names that
contradict with the 'national culture' and 'Turkish customs and
traditions,' was changed. The amendment dropped the terms 'national
culture' and 'Turkish customs and traditions,' and stated that only
names that disregard moral norms or offend the public could not be
given as first names. The following September, the government sent a
circular to the governors explaining the amendment and asking them to
ensure that any name could be registered in their province as long as
it does not violate moral norms and offend the public and is spelled
in accordance with the official Turkish alphabet. Soon after the
amendment was passed, the pro-Kurdish Democratic People's Party
(DEHAP) and the Free Society Party (ÖTP) organized a campaign for the
registration of Kurdish names that include letters q, x, and w, which
do not exist in the official alphabet. Administrators of these parties
collectively applied to courts to replace their names with explicit
Kurdish names such as Xemgin, Berxwedan, Warjin, Qalferat, and Hêzîl
Avaşîn. The applications reached hundreds. While the activists
declared that they wanted to show the limits of the cultural openings
and the EU reforms, they also introduced a set of Kurdish names, which
were largely unknown to the public before. Some of these names also
had explicit nationalist connotations such as Şérwav [warrior],
Serxwebun [independence], Welat [motherland], and Serhildan
[uprising].42 Neither the local courts nor the Court of Cassation
allowed the registration of Kurdish names with the letters that did
not exist in the alphabet. In the rulings, the courts stipulated that
spelling of the names should conform to the rules of the Turkish
alphabet and that nonconformity could create administrative problems
and confusion.43 The registration of Kurdish names that are spelled
with the letters in the official alphabet, nevertheless, has created
fewer problems since the amendment of the related article in the
Registration Law and signified some change in Turkish state
policies.44 In 2008, a father could register his newborn daugher's
name as Helin Kurdistan, which meant 'nest of Kurdistan,' without much
difficulty in Şanlıurfa.45

46  'Şanlıurfa'da Kürtçe Sokak İsmi Polemiği Bitmiyor,' Hürriyet, 26
December 2008.
47  'Kürtçe İsimler Reddedilince Park İsimsiz Kaldı,' Hürriyet, 13 May 2009.
39The insistence on the part of the Kurdish activists to use names
that are distinctively Kurdish and spelled with letters that do not
exist in the official alphabet signified to the public the Kurdish
activism's dissatisfaction with the new openings and its unwillingness
to accept an easy conciliation. The recent naming controversy also
underlined a Kurdification process that paralleled the earlier
Turkification practices, which aimed at purification of the language
and the construction of an exclusive ethnic identity. As such, it
indicates a mutually transformative interaction between state policies
and minority activism. The naming controversy of the post-2000 period
underlines the potential of Kurdish nationalism to act like a mirror
image of Turkish nationalism, which in turn makes reconciliation over
minority rights more difficult to achieve. Practices of Kurdification
reinforce a sense of ambivalence among state actors vis-à-vis minority
rights, lead them see such initiatives as steps for separatism rather
than acts for ethno-cultural preservation, and consolidate their
resistance to policy reforms. Many municipalities in the Southeast run
by the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP) began to push harder
for Kurdification, which resulted in official resistance at different
levels of state institutions. In 2007, the Diyarbakır Municipality
published a 105-page reference book that listed Kurdish names. In
Urfa, in the district of Suruç, the municipality's efforts to Kurdify
street names failed as a result of litigation.46 In Diyarbakır, giving
Kurdish names to parks was not allowed by the district administration
based on the grounds that the constitution stipulates Turkish as the
official language.47 Such a broad interpretation of the related
article in the constitution once more underlined the local
administrative suspicions of the Kurdish cultural demands and the
non-linear character of state-minority relations.

Conclusion40The Kurdish naming contention in Turkey suggests that the
conventional approaches to state-Kurdish relations remain inadequate
in understanding state behavior. As the Turkish state's responses to
Kurdish naming indicate, nation-building should not be conceptualized
as a linear and unchanging process. This process was in fact marked by
many instabilities and contradictions in state discourse and practice.
Nevertheless, the scholarship on state-minority relations remained
largely unconcerned with how different state institutions in Turkey
could tackle the same issue in different ways. In this study, I argue
that different contexts in which state actors operated mattered in
formulation and implementation of policies. Depictions of the Turkish
state as a coherent and unitary actor may overlook some of the major
factors that instigate the Kurdish conflict. What we need is more
ethnographic analyses of the Turkish state that problematize its
contradictory practices and attend to the practices of state
institutions at the local levels. This study is only a step towards
this in its attention to the fragmentations and divergent practices of
different state actors. More nuanced and in-depth studies of state
institutions could give a clearer picture of struggles that take place
at the state level, explain why state actors behave the way they do,
and clarify how a state's inconsistencies affect its relations with
the society.

48  See the short discussion on Turkish higher courts' conservatism
in JURISTRAS report, (...)
41One question that this study raises relates to the decisions of the
Court of Cassation vis-à-vis Kurdish naming. The Court's tolerance for
Kurdish names is particularly interesting because the Court has a
reputation for endorsing a guardianship role to protect Kemalist
ideals and prioritizing state interests over individual rights and
freedoms.48 Therefore, the Court has not been consistently liberal on
matters of human rights, let alone Kurdish political and cultural
rights. Under what circumstances and in which issue areas the Court
observes human rights norms and acts as an agent of liberalization are
important questions that go beyond the objectives and scope of this
study. These questions still await an answer and require further study
on the decisions of the Court of Cassation.

42The naming controversy also underlines how state policies and
minority activism mutually condition one another. The Turkish state's
interventions over the years to regulate and control the private lives
of the Kurds, such as what names to give to children, gave new meaning
and politicized many of the cultural expressions, as in the case of
Kurdish naming. The general official discourse on Turkishness and the
Turkification policies influenced the manner Kurdish activists
imagined Kurdish identity and pushed them to define it in more
exclusivist terms with clear-cut boundaries. The increasing use of
names by Kurdish activists as markers of divisive identity coupled
with the history of armed conflict, in turn, contributed to the
official resistance against Kurdish naming, especially at local
bureaucratic levels. One implication of this study is that
nation-building should be seen as a dynamic and interactive process,
rather than a unidirectional one. Neither state actors nor minority
activists act in a vacuum. In other words, both state policies and
minority strategies are a result of an interaction, in which earlier
acts and discourses matter for the formulation of current practices of
both sides. A clean causal relationship between state policies and
minority mobilizations may not be easily established with an approach
that takes into consideration such mutual transformations.
Nevertheless, an interactive and contextual understanding of
state-minority relations could better illuminate the possibilities for
reconciliation after long periods of conflict.

Top of page BibliographyAslan, S. (2008) Governing Areas of
Dissidence: Nation-Building and Ethnic Movements in Turkey and
Morocco, unpublished PhD Dissertation, University of Washington.

Ataman, M. (2002) 'Özal Leadership and the Restructuring of Turkish
Ethnic Policy in the 1980s,' Middle Eastern Studies 38 (4), pp.
123-143.

Bozarslan, H. (2001) 'Human Rights and the Kurdish Issue in Turkey:
1984-1999,' Human Rights Review 3 (1), pp. 45-54.

Bulliet, R. W. (1978) 'First Names and Political Change in Modern
Turkey,' International Journal of Middle East Studies 9 (4), pp.
489-495.

Cemal, H. (2003) Kürtler, Istanbul, Doğan Kitap.

Çolak, Y. (2004) 'Language Policy and Official Ideology in Early
Republican Turkey,' Middle Eastern Studies 40 (6), pp. 67-91.

Hansen, T. B.; Stepputat, F. (2001) 'Introduction. States of
Imagination,' in Hansen, T. B.; Stepputat, F. (eds.) States of
Imagination: Ethnographic Explorations of the Postcolonial State,
Durham, Duke University Press.

Hassanpour, A. (1992) Nationalism and Language in Kurdistan,
1918-1985, San Francisco, Mellen Research University Press.

Koca, H. (1998) Yakın Tarihten Günümüze Hükümetlerin Doğu-Güneydoğu
Anadolu Politikaları, Konya, Mikro Yayınları.

Kurban, D. (2003) 'Confronting Equality: The Need for Constitutional
Protection of Minorities on Turkey's Path to the European Union,'
Columbia Human Rights Law Review 151 (35), pp. 151-214.

Kutlay, N. (1997) Kürt Kimliği Oluşum Süreci, Istanbul, Belge Yayınları.

McDowall, D. (1996) A Modern History of the Kurds, London & New York,
I.B. Tauris.

Migdal, J. S.; Kohli, A.; Shue, V. (eds.) (1994) State Power and
Social Forces. Domination and Transformation in the Third World,
Cambridge & New York, Cambridge University Press.

Migdal, J. (2001) State in Society. Studying How States and Societies
Transform and Constitute One Another, Cambridge, Cambridge University
Press.

Natali, D. (2005) The Kurds and the State. Evolving National Identity
in Iraq, Turkey, and Iran, Syracuse, Syracuse University Press.

Öktem, K. (2008) 'The Nation's Imprint: Demographic Engineering and
the Change of Toponymes in Republican Turkey,' European Journal of
Turkish Studies, no. 7, http://www.ejts.org/document2243.html

Oran, B. (2004) Türkiye'de Azınlıklar: Kavramlar, Lozan, İç Mevzuat,
İçtihat, Uygulama, Istanbul, TESEV Yayınları.

Romano, D. (2006) The Kurdish Nationalist Movement. Opportunity,
Mobilization, and Identity, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Ross, M. H. (2007) Cultural Contestation in Ethnic Conflict,
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Sadoğlu, H. (2003) Türkiye'de Ulusçuluk ve Dil Politikaları, Istanbul,
Istanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi Yayınları.

Scassa, T. (1996) 'National Identity, Ethnic Surnames, and the State,'
Canadian Journal of Law and Society 11 (2), pp. 167-191.

Scott, J. C.; Tehranian, J.; Mathias, J. (2002) 'The Production of
Legal Identities Proper to States: The Case of the Permanent Family
Surname,' Comparative Studies in Society and History 44 (1), pp. 4-44.

Somer, M. (2004) 'Turkey's Kurdish Conflict: Changing Context, and
Domestic and Regional Implications,' The Middle East Journal 58 (2),
pp. 235-254.

Türköz, M. F. (2004) The Social Life of the State's Fantasy: Memories
and Documents on Turkey's 1934 Surname Law, unpublished PhD
Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania.

Türköz, M. (2007) 'Surname Narratives and the State-Society Boundary:
Memories of Turkey's Family Name Law of 1934,' Middle Eastern Studies
43 (6), pp. 893-908.

Yanık, L. K. (2006) 'Nevruz or Newroz? Deconstructing the Invention of
a Contested Tradition in Contemporary Turkey,' Middle Eastern Studies
42 (2), pp. 285-302.

Yeğen, M. (2007) 'Turkish Nationalism and the Kurdish Question,'
Ethnic and Racial Studies 30 (1), pp. 119-151.

Yıldız, K. (2005) The Kurds in Turkey: EU Accession and Human Rights,
London, Pluto Press.

Ziya, Abdullah (1933) 'Köy Mimarısı',Ülkü 9, pp. 37-41.

Top of page Notes1 I thank Jason Scheideman, Nicole Watts, the members
of the EJTS editorial board, and the two anonymous readers for their
helpful comments and criticisms on previous drafts of this article.

2 Radikal, 'Baran, Serhat Yasaklı,' 4 March 2002.

3 Radikal, 'Berivan'ın Yargıcı Şirvan,' 19 April 2002 and Cumhuriyet,
'Şirvan'dan Baran'a Onay,' 22 May 2002.

4  For some examples of such approach see Natali (2005), McDowall
(1996), and Hassanpour (1992).

5  I discussed state's efforts to detribalize the Kurdish regions and
to makeover the Kurdish society at length in my dissertation. For more
see Aslan (2008).

6  This practice was also confirmed by some of my interviewees in
Southeastern Anatolia.

7  For more on the Surname Law and the negotiations between citizens
and state officials during the surname adoption process, see Türköz
(2004) and (2007).

8  For more on the language policies of the early Turkish Republic,
see Çolak (2004) and Sadoğlu (2003).

9  For a detailed analysis of changes in place names during the
Republican period, see Öktem (2008).

10 Türkiye Mülki İdare Bölümleri, 1 Kasım 1980 durumu, İçişleri
Bakanlığı, Genel Yayın No: 408, Seri III, Sayı 4. The practice
continued after 1980 as well.

11  Tanrıkulu was the president of the Bar Association in Diyarbakır
and is the regional representative of Turkish Human Rights Foundation.
He was one of the first attorneys who submitted Kurdish complaints to
the European Court of Human Rights.

12  Interview with Sezgin Tanrıkulu, Radikal, 25 August 2003.

13  My impression is that demand for distinctively Kurdish names was
also lower in the pre-1980 period, before the expansion of Kurdish
nationalism to the masses. Nevertheless, to my knowledge, there has
been no study to verify a change in Kurdish naming preferences over
time.

14  For the full text of the law, see 'Türkçeden Baska Dillerde
Yapılacak Yayınlar Hakkında Kanun,' Resmi Gazete, No: 18199, 22
October 1983, pp. 27-28.

15  According to the official statistics, between 1986 and 1991, 115
court cases were opened and 189 people were tried for the violation of
Law 2932. This data is compiled from the website of the General
Directorate of Criminal Registration and Statistics of the Ministry of
Justice: http://www.adli-sicil.gov.tr/istatist.htm. However, many more
people were detained and interrogated but not charged for violating
Law 2932. There is no statistical data about their numbers. In
addition, in many cases the authorities considered speaking in Kurdish
as a violation of the Turkish Penal Code's Article 142, which banned
advocating separatism and propagating ideas that weaken national
sentiments.

16  Interview with Sezgin Tanrıkulu, Radikal, 25 August 2003.

17  See Cemal (2003) for detailed accounts of positions by different
state actors on the Kurdish issue.

18  For more on the debates see 'Kürtçeye Özgürlük,' Nokta, 3 June 1990.

19  I discuss how local state officials recreated many of the
linguistic restrictions even after the abolition of Law 2932 at length
in my dissertation. For more see Chapter III in Aslan (2008).

20  See the articles 'Zozan oldu Suzan,' Nokta, 15 February 1987, pp.
16-18 and 'Zozanların yasağı da kalktı,' Nokta, 14 February 1988, p.
38.

21  See 'Resmi bir itiraf: Kürtler azınlıktır,' Nokta, 19 June 1988, pp. 22-23.

22  More information about the Turkish Court of Cassation can be found
at www.yargıtay.gov.tr. The court decisions in this article are
compiled from the Kazancı case law database. For more information on
the database, see www.kazanci.com.tr.

23  The following are a few case examples that involved non-Kurdish
names. It was the 18th Civil Chamber (18. Hukuk Dairesi) of the Court
of Cassation that heard all these cases. For instance, a dual citizen
of Germany and Turkey applied to the Court of Cassation to annul a
lower court's decision that did not allow him to replace his Turkish
name with his German name, Dennis. The Court of Cassation annulled the
lower court's decision and issued a ruling that there was no law or
regulation that required a name to be Turkish and that everyone had
the right to officially carry a name by which he was known in society.
For more see Esas no: 2002/4750, Karar no: 2002/7382, 1 July 2002.
About a man who wanted to take his original German name after he
became Turkish citizen, see Esas no: 1996/2181, Karar no: 1996/2777,
19 March 1996; about the name 'Jutta,' see Esas no: 1997/3451, Karar
no: 1997/4459, 6 May 1997; about the name 'Jülyet,' see Esas no:
2002/10421, Karar no: 2002/12155, 16 December 2002.

24  Yargıtay İlamı, T.C. Yargıtay 3. Hukuk Dairesi, Esas no: 8859,
Karar no: 516.

25  Yargıtay İlamı, T.C. Yargıtay 18. Hukuk Dairesi, Esas no: 9708,
Karar no: 0832, 13 October 1993.

26  Yargıtay İlamı, T.C. Yargıtay 18. Hukuk Dairesi, Esas no:
1994/7386, Karar no: 1994/8560, 21 June 1994.

27  Only once in the court's decision the name's Kurdish origin is
acknowledged. In the rest of the text, the name is referred to as
Persian.

28  T.C. Yargıtay Hukuk Genel Kurulu, Esas no: 1999/18-966, Karar no:
1999/1010, 1 December 1999. The decision can be found at Yargıtay
İçtihatları, no. 52, April 2000.

29  T.C. Yargıtay Hukuk Genel Kurulu, Esas no: 2000/18-127, Karar no:
2000/154, 1 March 2000.

30  Interview with a Kurdish activist. Also see Türkiye İnsan Hakları
Vakfı (1993): Örneklerle Türkiye İnsan Hakları Raporu 1992, Ankara:
Türkiye İnsan Hakları Vakfı Yayınları, p. 171.

31  T.C. Malatya İdare Mahkemesi, Esas no: 1999/1204, Karar no:
2000/335, 11 April 2000. For the interview see 'Rodi'nin adı yok,'
Milliyet, 13 February 2003.

32  For more on the reform packages see Oran (2004).

33  For detailed information on the recent reforms that related to
state-minority relations in general, see Oran (2004), Yıldız (2005),
and Kurban (2003).

34  For this resolution see http://www.kurdistan.org/Current-Updates/kadek.html

35  '40 Yıllık Kani Oldu Kürt İsmi,' Hürriyet, 29 January 2002.

36  Kurban (2003: 196); 'Kanun Değisti, Kafa Değişmedi,' Radikal, 1
September 2003; and see the interview with Sezgin Tanrıkulu, Radikal,
25 August 2003.

37  'Rojhat'a dava açıldı,' Özgür Politika, 11 October 2002. See
http://www.savaskarsitlari.org/arsiv.asp?ArsivTipID=5&ArsivAnaID=10059#ilgili
to access the full article.

38  'Oğluna Robin Adını Koyamadı,' Cumhuriyet, 16 October 2002.

39  'Yine Kürtçe Yine Yasak,' Radikal, 30 May 2002.

40  For more information on the official circular about naming and the
several cases in this period, see Türkiye İnsan Hakları Vakfı (2003):
Örneklerle Türkiye İnsan Hakları Raporu 2002, Ankara: Türkiye İnsan
Hakları Vakfı Yayınları, pp. 22-26. The report can be reached at
www.tihv.org.tr.

41  For more on the EU reforms and practice see Kurban (2003) and Aslan (2008).

42  For more see the 2002, 2003, and 2004 annual reports of the
Turkish Human Rights Foundation at www.tihv.org.tr. Also see Radikal,
16 December 2003 and 28 October 2003.

43  Yargıtay Ilami, T.C. Yargıtay 18. Hukuk Dairesi, Esas
no:2004/3398, Karar no:2004/4808, 25 February 2004.

44  See the annual reports of the Turkish Human Rights Foundation
after 2003 at www.tihv.org.tr.

45  'İşte Küçük Kürdistan,' Radikal, 28 October 2009.

46  'Şanlıurfa'da Kürtçe Sokak İsmi Polemiği Bitmiyor,' Hürriyet, 26
December 2008.

47  'Kürtçe İsimler Reddedilince Park İsimsiz Kaldı,' Hürriyet, 13 May 2009.

48  See the short discussion on Turkish higher courts' conservatism
in JURISTRAS report, 'Supranational Rights Litigation, Implementation,
and the Domestic Impact of Strasbourg Court Jurisprudence: A Case
Study of Turkey,' in http://www.juristras.eliamep.gr/?p=156

ReferencesElectronic reference
Senem Aslan, << Incoherent State: The Controversy over Kurdish Naming
in Turkey >>, European Journal of Turkish Studies [Online], 10 | 2009,


Author: Senem Aslan

http://ejts.revues.org/index4142.html
**************************************
N.b.: Listing on the lgpolicy-list is merely intended as a service to
its members
and implies neither approval, confirmation nor agreement by the owner
or sponsor of the list as to the veracity of a message's contents.
Members who disagree with a message are encouraged to post a rebuttal.
(H. Schiffman, Moderator)

For more information about the lgpolicy-list, go to
https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/
listinfo/lgpolicy-list
*******************************************

_______________________________________________
This message came to you by way of the lgpolicy-list mailing list
lgpolicy-list at groups.sas.upenn.edu
To manage your subscription unsubscribe, or arrange digest format: https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/lgpolicy-list