[lg policy] Turkey's Kurdish-Language Policy: Learning from Europe

Tue Mar 19 15:17:18 UTC 2013

 Turkey's Kurdish-Language Policy: Learning from Europe

Soner Cagaptay<http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/experts/view/cagaptay-soner>
and
Tyler Evans <http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/experts/view/evans-tyler>

*Al-Monitor*<http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/03/turkey-kurdish-issue-language-policy-european-precedent.html>

March 17, 2013

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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).

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.

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.

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.

Europe has indeed many lessons for the Turks, including some in Kurdish.

*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.*
http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/turkeys-kurdish-language-policy-learning-from-europe

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