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

Publishing in Kurdish was interrupted especially after the militaryinterventions of 1971 and 1980. A new constitution was created in 1982.According to article 26 of this constitution “a language banned by law cannotbe used to express and spread ideas”. According to article 28 “press is free”but “may not publish anything in any language which is forbidden”. On 19October 1983 a new law # 2932 was introduced to determine the languageswhich were “forbidden”. According to the law, languages which “were not thefirst official languages of states recognized by Turkey” were forbidden. Peopleexpressing ideas in any of the forbidden languages would be imprisonedbetween 6 months and three years. According to article 31 a printing houseprinting books in forbidden languages could be closed (14).The sociologist İsmail Beşikçi is a good example of a man who sufferedbecause of the oppression against the Kurds. He has stayed in prison for 17years and 2 months so far because he wrote books about the Kurds. He wasalso sentenced to 10 years of imprisonment and 5 years of house arrestbecause of a letter he wrote to the chairman of the Swedish Writers' Syndicatein 1981. 32 of his 36 books published so far have been banned (15). Hispublisher was arrested due to instigation of separatism.The law # 2932 banning the Kurdish language was revoked on12.04.1991 by the law of war on terror. However, the ban still continued. Forexample, the 1996 Istanbul edition of the romantic epos Mem and Zin writtenin Kurdish in 1695 was banned and confiscated, and as the translator М.Emin Bozarslan did not live in Turkey, the publisher İhsan Türkmen wassentenced to 13 months and 10 days of imprisonment and a fine(16).At a time when it was trying to become a member of the European Union,Turkey found itself in a situation where it could not openly defend the oldrestrictions on Kurdish. Some secret state documents which were publiclyrevealed (17) show that other methods were used for impeding thedevelopment of the Kurdish language. The official document # 472 sent tothe security services by the Minister of Interior Meral Akşener on 3 January1997 serves as an example of these secret documents. It reads:“Taking administrative and legal measures against those who open researchinstitutions for spreading the Kurdish language, for developing it into a writtenand literary language, and organizing Kurdish language courses...” (18)In the 1990s in Northern Kurdistan a new development was the issue ofmigration. As a response to the guerrilla war fought by the PKK, the Turkishsecurity services set thousands of Kurdish villages on fire, depopulatingentire villages. Several million people from these villages had to migrate totowns. Thus the security services tried to eliminate the guerrilla support invillages. Another reason for forceful migration was that the Kurds settling8