the past and the present of book publishing in kurdish language in ...

CONTENTS OF THE RESEARCHAND SOME TERMSNowadays, the Kurds live in the territories of the states of Turkey, Iran,Iraq, Syria, Armenia and Lebanon. In most of these countries the use of theKurdish language has been banned in one way or another and the Kurdshave fought for the right to write and publish books and periodicals in theirmother tongue for a long time. In this research I will try to describe thecondition of Kurdish book publishing in Turkey and Syria.It would be useful to remind the reader of the following facts in connectionto the research:The Kurdish language has different dialects and is written in threedifferent alphabets: the Arabic, the Latin and the Cyrillic. In Turkey theArabic alphabet was used until 1928 and then replaced with the Latin. TheKurdish dialects Kurmanci and Kırmancki (Kırdki, Zazaki, Dımılki) are spokenin Turkey, and books are published in them. Kurmanci is the only dialectspoken In Syria. The Arabic alphabet is the official one in Syria and writingand publishing books in Kurdish is not allowed there. Ignoring the ban,Kurdish writers who write in Kurdish use the Latin alphabet like the Kurdsof Turkey, not the Arabic one.The word Kurdistan which means “country of the Kurds” has been in usefor nearly 900 years. Kurdistan is now divided between Turkey, Iran, Iraqand Syria. The Kurds call these parts Northern Kurdistan, EasternKurdistan, Southern Kurdistan and Western Kurdistan. Northern Kurdistanwill mean in this research the eastern and south-eastern regions of Anatolia,and Western Kurdistan will mean the northern part of Syria, close to theborder with Turkey. In this study the term Kurdish writer denotes a personwho has published at least one book in Kurdish, and the term Kurdishpublishing house denotes a company that has published at least one book inthe Kurdish language.4