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

the organization reached the conclusion that this population had the right toindependence and recommended that Turkey should announce the Kurdsindependent, Turkey had to accept this recommendation and waive all itsprivileges and rights in the said territories (4).Nothing of this sort happened. In 1923 replacing the Ottoman Empirewith the new Turkish state, Mustafa Kemal announced the Republic ofTurkey. The Treaty of Lausanne signed on 24 July 1924 between the TurkishRepublic and the western states determined the borders of Turkey. Accordingto this treaty, Kurdistan, rich of petrol and other natural resources, wasdivided between Turkey and the contemporary Iraq and Syria. The bordersremain the same today. The Treaty of Lausanne did not mention the rights ofthe Kurds at all.There are various minorities in Turkey such as Arabs, Greeks, Jews,Syrians, Laz, Georgians, Albanians, Circassians, Chechens and others whosemother tongue is not Turkish. As the Treaty of Lausanne guaranteed ethnicrights to non-Muslim minorities, only the Greeks, the Jews and theArmenians were allowed to read and write in their mother tongues.On 3 March 1924 the publications in Kurdish were banned (5). Accordingto article 14 of the Plan for Reformation of the East dated 1925 the cities andtowns where Kurds live were listed, and speaking Kurdish there was banned:“People who speak a language other than Turkish in state and municipalityinstitutions, and other organs and administration, in schools, at themarketplace in the district and regional centers of Malatya, Elâziz, Diyarıbekir,Bitlis, Van, Muş, Urfa, Ergani, Hozat, Erciş, Adilcevaz, Ahlat, Palu, Çarsancak,Çemişgezek, Ovacık, Hısnımansur, Behisni, Arga, Hekimhan, Birecik, Çermik,will be brought before the courts for committing a crime against the state andthe local authorities.” (6)Authorities wanted to hamper reading and writing as well as speaking ofKurdish outside the home. The names of Kurdish villages and towns werechanged to Turkish ones. Parents were not allowed to give their childrenKurdish names. Kurdish songs were banned. The official statement of theKemalists was that the Kurds were “Turks from the mountains” and thatthere wasn’t a distinct Kurdish nation. The names “Kurd” and “Kurdistan”were removed from geographical maps and books. These words were madetaboo. Absurd things have happened because of this situation. For example,even in the year 2005 Turkish Airlines (THY) cancelled an Iraqi woman’splane ticket from Stockholm to Iraq because her name was “Kurdistan” (7).Another example in the papers is the dismissal of Prof. Dr. Diemut Majer forcalling the Eastern part of Turkey Kurdistan during his lecture at the BilkentUniversity in Turkey (8).6