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

Turkish authorities try to hinder the Kurds from giving Kurdish names totheir children not only in Turkey but also abroad, and they try to impedeeducation in their mother tongue. For example, in 1985 the Swedishambassador in Ankara and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Stockholmreceived a warning notice because the Kurdish personnel taking care of 15Kurdish preschoolers in a nursery school in Stockholm were speakingKurdish with them (9).During the Ottoman era there was no ban on speaking Kurdish until1898, the publication of the first Kurdish newspaper, Kurdistan, which wasimmediately banned. Between 1908 and 1923 a few Kurdish newspapers andmagazines were banned due to political reasons but the Kurdish languagewas not banned. The books in Kurdish were not banned either. Kurdish wastaught in the “medrese” schools of Kurdistan.Prohibition in this field appeared on the very first days after theestablishment of the Republic of Turkey. According to the first Turkishconstitution of 1924, “Islam is the religion of the Turkish state, and Turkish isits official language” (10). The state took political measures which aimed atforceful assimilation. During the 1930s the state acquired the officialtheories known as “the Turkish History thesis” and “the Sun-Languagetheory”. According to the former, the Turkish race was the mother of allraces. According to the latter, all languages in the world originated fromTurkish. The Turkish policy towards Kurdish is a typical example oflinguicide (language genocide) (11). According to the Turkish sociologistİsmail Beşikçi Kurdistan was not even a colony because colonies haveborders and status, whereas Kurdistan is divided and the existence of Kurdsis denied (12).As a reaction against the repressive policy of the Turkish state the Kurdsrose in rebellion several times. In the battles between the Turkish army andthe Kurdish rebels in 1925, 1927-1930 and 1937-1938, tens of thousands ofpeople were killed and hundreds of thousands were forcefully sent into exileto regions where Turks lived.A Kurdish national movement flourished in the 1960s and the 1970s aftera long silence when a few Kurdish intellectuals tried to publish books andmagazines in Kurdish but each attempt was met by the severe measures ofthe authorities.In 1960, 1971 and 1980 the military junta came to power in Turkey.There were mass arrests. Thousands of Kurdish politicians and adolescentswere tortured. Many of them were forced to emigrate to other countries.Sometimes even a Kurdish alphabet book was the reason for its author'sarrest. For example, in 1968 Emin Bozarslan was arrested and held in prisonfor four months because he wrote a Kurdish alphabet book (13).7