“My Mother Tongue” (1) : Greek, Armenian and Ladino

The accounts of people with native languages other than Turkish, written for bianet on occasion of the International Mother Language Day (21 February) all resonate with the same feelings and thoughts: the “other” languages have been silenced, hidden, and thus not developed.

Lack of formal teaching and/or lack of societal recognition of the languages has meant that there is a danger or reality of new generations not learning them anymore.

Greek, Kurdish, Bosnian, Ladino, Arabic, Armenian, …they have all experience assimilation policies in Turkey.

Greek population dwindling

We spoke to Mihail Vasiliadis, the editor of the Apoyevmatini newspaper. He said that with the forced migration of Greeks from Turkey (“Rum”) in 1964, the population dropped from 100,000 to under 3,000.

“The reduction in the population has also made it difficult to speak the language. There are around 2,000 Greek-speaking Rum among the 70 million Turks. Families have even started to use Turkish.”

The editor has also pointed to the pervasive influence of TV on the young generation: “The new generation grew up with Turkish. Of course everyone must know the state’s official language. But they must also be able to use their own languages at the same level.”

Because the Greek spoken in Turkey is identical with the Greek of Greece, there is no danger of the language dying out; however, there is a question of linguistic competence.

“There used to be a Greek school in every neighbourhood of Istanbul. Now there are only three high schools and five primary schools.”

The Apoyevmatini has got a circulation of 600, but Vasiliadis still insists on publishing only in Greek in order to keep the language alive.

"Not as well as the language deserves" 

Nayat Karaköse, an “Armenian living in Turkey”, wrote about her experiences with her experience of “not being able to speak, read or write Armenian as well as it deserves.” Although she attended an Armenian school until third grade, she then asked her parents to take her out because she was unhappy.

She blames her unhappiness on the pressure children feel when learning two languages at once, with different alphabets. Her parents, friends and relatives all warned her not to forget her Armenian, but she says:

“Every day as I was growing up, I neglected Armenian. Years passed and I learned English, French, a lot of Italian, but I had thrown my own mother tongue to the side and forgotten more and more of it.”

She nevertheless feels grateful for being able to speak the language, while today many Armenian children do not know their mother tongue anymore.

"Loss of language is not the most vital issue"

Avi Haligua speaks of the loss of Ladino, the Spanish dialect spoken by the descendants of the Sephardic Jews fleeing the Spanish Inquisition and coming to Constantinople, today Istanbul, in the 15th Century. He himself was brought up speaking Turkish and says, “For the third generation, most people will not speak [Ladino].”

“All my memories connected to Ladino belong to my childhood. I only know the terms of endearment well in that language.”

Haligua writes that in the nation-building process, the Republic wanted one language only, one result of which was the “Citizen speak Turkish” campaign of 1928.

Erdogan's double standards 

He says, cynically, that the assimilation which Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan denounced as a “crime against humanity” in Germany recently, was applied strictly in Turkey.

However, for Haligua the main problem is not the loss of the language; as long as the different people in Turkey, be they a headscarved student, a Kurd forced to migrate, a Senegalese “illegal migrant”, a writer sentenced under Article 301, or a worker forced to work under slave conditions, are not treated as people, then there will be no peaceful coexistence. (GG/NK/TK/AH/AG)