Language Research

Turkey does not recognize the Kurdish people. In 1983 the law prohibited the use of Kurdish and suppressed their culture. Only in 1991 did the State permit the use of Kurdish again, although to do so frequently leads to discrimination and possible persecution. As anti-Turkish propaganda is still liable to heavy punishment, the usage of Kurdish in (legal) publications is still rare.

For Kurds, who have not been recognized before, there is no possibility of a return to a status quo as compared to the Albanians of Kosovo. The Turkish Republic has no history of autonomy and recognition of national minorities, thus the government offers no such prospective to the Kurdish population.

The presence of many other ethnic minorities leads the government to see the Kurdish quest for recognition as the first step in the Turkish variant of the “Domino theory.” This is not seen as a valid argument as most of the other minorities do not have a strongly developed ethnic identity and their recognition would not necessarily lead to disintegration.