The Prospect for the Independence of Kurds

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A linguistic and geopolitical perspective

 In this essay, I will share some information with you about the prospect for the independence of Kurds. My focus will be on the geopolitics of language within the Kurdish community. Before discussing the subject, I will define the terms used in this document. The definition of keywords are as follows.

1. Turkish, Kurdish:
 The languages that are spoken in Turkey and/or Kurdistan.
2. Turkish people, Kurdish people:
 The ethnic groups who speak Turkish or Kurdish in Turkey and/or North Kurdistan.
3. Dialect:
 The form of a language that is spoken in one area with grammar, words and pronunciation that may be different from other forms of the same.
4. Indigenous language:
 The language that is considered as a minority tongue by authorities for reasons of political expediency.

e.g.:
 The government of Turkey says that there are hundreds of "dialects" in Turkey, however these "dialects" can not communicate with each other. In fact, these "dialects" are indigenous languages. For example, the original language of Kurdish is an Indo-European language and it is a completely different linguistic branch from that of the Turkish language.

 1. The policy of the government of Turkey

 The ambition of Mustafa Kemal (The founder of the Republic of Turkey) was to establish a nation-state of the Turkish people. He was inspired by the Western world and his objective was to make Turkey a modern and strong country. 

 After independence from the Ottoman Empire, he began to force the ethnic minorities within Turkey to assimilate to the language and culture of the Turks. Generally speaking, there are no "pure" Turks. In the Ottoman period, there were many ethnicities in the empire such as Austrian, Hungarian, Persian people, and others. Mustafa Kemal's government had the problems of creating a homogenous nation-state from a heterogeneous population. HIs solution was to forge a national identity around the Turkish language.

 Therefore, one of the main policies of the Republic of Turkey since then has been language assimilation, and in 1929, he started the language revolution but there are some criticisms lasting even to this day.

 "All of the citizens living in Turkey are Turk, Turks speak only Turkish. So there are no languages except for Turkish in Turkey"

 The government of Turkey considered not only minority languages such as the Zaza language, but also major languages such as Azerbaijani and Tatar Kazakh as dialects. After a coup in 1980, Turkey's Constitution was changed and they acknowledged dialects as indigenous languages, but the basis of the policy of assimilation was not changed.

2. Fact file

 According to the CIA Facebook, there are 82 million people living in Turkey and 20% are Kurdish people. However, by the definition of Turkish national identity, all people in Turkey speaking Turkish are Turk. Therefore Turkey is 100% Turkish.

 The reason why there are Kurdish people is that the government recognized Kurdish as an indigenous language because of the coup and changed their linguistic policy. However, the data from the CIA Facebook is only the crude demographic estimate, it is said that only the Intelligence agency in Turkey recognizes how many hidden Kurdish people are living in Turkey. It is estimated to be about 33%. 

 And within the proposed borders of Kurdistan, there is no reliable data, either. According to various sources, there are between 27 million and 45 million Kurds living in 5 countries: Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Armenia. Kurdistan is only a "geographical expression" which is not independent or sovereign.  The definition of Kurdistan is the "Region where Kurds live". In short, their identity is an ethnic one. However, the definition of Kurdish ethnicity is very foggy.

3. Features of the Turkish and the Kurdish languages

 Turkish and Kurdish, languages have unique features. Modern Turkish is based on the Istanbul dialect during the Ottoman period. The capital of Turkey has been Ankara since its independence in 1924, however the standard Turkish dialect has been based on the Istanbul dialect because of its long history dating back to the 15th century. 

 In 1929, modern Turkish, had its grammar radically changed by Mustafa Kemal. The most significant change was the switch from the Arabic to the Latin alphabet. In the process of the language revolution, Turkish has acquired a huge number of loan words from Persian, Arabic and Greek language. For example, most of the seafood names are loan words from Greek.

 In building modern Turkish identity, Mustafa Kemal's government had a challenge in that the Ottoman Empire, recently dismembered by Western Great Powers, was a multi-ethnic society. Because there was no ethnically pure "nation" of Turks, Kemal's government had to create a Turkish nation around a language. This approach married national identity to linguistic communitarianism.

 However, there were 3 exceptions. The Greek, Armenian, and Arabic languages. The Greek and Armenian languages and their speakers are protected by the treaty of Lausanne, so the government has to recognize these 2 languages as "languages", not "dialects". Arabic language is protected for another reason. Because 99.8% of people living in Turkey are Muslims (mostly Sunnis), and Arabic language is the holy language for them. On the other hand, there are about 100 minorities who speak Turkish or their own languages. But the government forces them to speak Turkish, and finally, some minorities have lost their languages. Ironically, minorities who lost their language began to desire a stronger ethnic identity than indigenous language speakers. For this reason, Turkey's assimilation policy will fail.

 Kurdish are complicated, too. Kurdistan is not a monolingual cultural and ethnic space. Because most of the region they live in are high mountains, every village is isolated. For this reason, their dialects are transformed uniquely, as a result Kurdish has no common grammar. In addition, there are not only dialects, but also some indigenous languages. The people who live in the North and South Kurdistan regions can not communicate with each other using Kurdish.

 A half of the people who are living in North Kurdistan (East Turkey) are Zaza people, they are not Kurdish people. But activists insist that the Zaza people are Kurdish people and their languages are dialects of Kurdish. As noted above this, the original meanings of "Kurdistan" were generic names in the geography (the people who live in the mountains), it had been changed to represent an ethnicity.

4. Conclusion

 Kurds are unlikely to achieve independence because of their vague definition as follows:

1. Language:
 Complicated dialects, indigenous language, and the absence of a common grammar.
2. Religion:
 Conflict between Sunni people and minorities such as Alevi people.
3. Politics:
 Vague identity surrounding their ethnicity.

　The first reason is language problems. There are many dialects which have been transformed uniquely and can not communicate with each other using their dialects. In addition, there are many indigenous languages such as the Zaza language. Thus, the logic that Kurdish activists insist is not correct. Kurdistan is a multilingual culture and ethnic space, and Kurdish has no common grammar. It is desirable that education with common grammar is the best for schooling, but there is no common one. It needs many years to organize and if Kurds force the Zaza people to use Kurdish, disputes will occur.

 The second reason concerns religion. There are many Alevi people living in East Turkey (=North Kurdistan) and it includes Kurdish, Zaza, and Turkish people. Sunni people consider Alevi people to be heretics, they dislike each other. Most of the Kurds who are living in Iran and Iraq (=South Kurdistan) are Sunni people, it is highly unlikely that they would cooperate for independence.

 The third, final reason is political. The government of Turkey and their intelligence agency recognize that there are about 25 millions Kurdish people in Turkey, and they are afraid of the linguistic autonomy request from Kurdish people. In response, the Turkish government behaves in a chauvinistic way towards the Kurds; often using the armed forces to violently suppress separatists. On the other hand, other minorities have a strong identity in their culture and language, but not everybody requires independence.

 The reason why Kurdish people require independence is that the government of Turkey is afraid of their population and tries to assimilate them using violence. Many Kurdish people are jailed, tortured, and killed by the government. They had no choice but to rise up in arms. By the government's policy about language, they will fail to assimilate minorities. On the other hand, Kurdish activists have no concrete strategies. They have no identities except for a vague racial consciousness.

 Kurds are unlikely to ever achieve sovereign independence as a nation-state and if the government wants to stop independence movements, they should change their assimilation strategies and stop violence as an initial first step in the process.