'Children think that Kurdish is banned'

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The Migration and Humanitarian Assistance Foundation (GİYAV) has published its Report on Monitoring Children's Mother Language Use in Turkey's Kurdish-majority southeastern province of Diyarbakır.

Conducting a monitoring and reporting study on "Linguistic Rights" in order to understand what is happening in terms of mother language rights and to advocate on the basis of children's experience and suggestions, the GİYAV aims to reveal how the developments regarding "Mother Language Rights" and the reservations made to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) are reflected in the lives of Kurdish children.

In the study regulated with the reservations made by Turkey to the UNCRC, the rights of children to access media products in their mother language (Article 17), to receive education in their mother language (Article 29), to live their own culture and to use their mother language (Article 30); the fundamental principles of the Convention, which are the right to life, survival, and development, were discussed within the framework of the prohibition of discrimination, child participation and the best interests of the child.

 As part of the monitoring study, human rights indicators were developed using international human rights standards to understand whether the public administration fulfills its obligations regarding children's language rights. The monitoring report was prepared based on the findings of in-depth interviews conducted with parents, teachers, school founders, artists, media workers, representatives of non-governmental organizations, and local administrative groups, consisting of 20 children and 40 people living in Diyarbakır.

Findings

All adults participating in the study said that their mother language is Kurdish. Although most of the parents stated that they mainly speak Kurdish in the household, some participants stated that they have bilingual communication with children, while some of the participants stated that they speak Turkish with their children because they do not speak Kurdish themselves:

'There is a need for a revolutionary mentality'

"Two of my little ones do not know how to speak at all, the others understand and do not know how to speak. When I speak, my children look at me blankly."

"Usually we speak 70 percent Turkish, but there is a thirty percent of Kurdish, which is my reality, so it would be a lie if I say I'm talking to my children in that language."

"My mother's language is my language. I normally speak Turkish, but I know a little bit of Kurdish."

"Turkish, but our mother language is Kurdish, but we speak Turkish."

"So I generally speak Turkish everywhere since I do not speak Kurdish. But I want Kurdish to be used, but we speak Turkish because I am not able to speak much."

"We are trying to resist in our old mother language and not to forget it, but because the language of education is switched to Turkish by force, there is a contradiction because no alternative is left. Such multilingualism gives one as free a space as possible, the other is constrained, it is troublesome."

"There are also some reservations about speaking the mother language as if a 'terrorist' or a 'terrorist activity' is a part of it, there are also reservations due to such misinformation and such sensations."

"Speaking Kurdish, learning Kurdish is perceived as a political stance. There is a need for a revolutionary mentality."

What did the children say?

GİYAV team determined that the children thought Kurdish was forbidden in the questions they asked about Turkish:

"Although it is not forbidden to speak Kurdish, children's expressions revealed that they were subjected to de facto obstructions and exclusion when speaking in their mother language in their daily lives."

Some of the interviewee children have said:

'If I see an officer, I speak Turkish'

"Because speaking Kurdish is not tolerated at school, and also, in terms of the system, our language is banned, we communicate more in Turkish."

"I think it is forbidden to speak Kurdish at school. We, right away, prefer Turkish. Because very few people know. I know a little too."

"When I see someone old, I start talking in Kurdish. If I see that the teacher's style is more official, I start talking in Turkish."

"We often speak Kurdish with my friends, whom I am close with, during the break, and we speak Turkish during the lessons with the teachers."

"Yes, we speak Turkish during the lesson. I speak Kurdish with my friends who can speak Kurdish."

Conclusion

GİYAV made the following assessment in the Conclusion of the report;

"When we concluded our study, we found that children were deprived of the right to live their own culture, to use and learn their mother language, to receive education in their mother language, to access media products, and to access application and complaint mechanisms. We have determined that disabled and poor children are in a much more disadvantaged position compared to other children in terms of obtaining these rights.

"Another aim of our study was to see how the reservations placed in the three articles of the UNCRC, which includes mother language rights, are reflected in the lives of children and to evaluate to what extent Turkey fulfills its responsibilities arising from the Convention.

"In this context, when we have examined the 4th and 5th Periodic Reports of Turkey, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child was not given detailed information on the special measures taken regarding the right of children to develop their own culture and use their language, periodic reports were not prepared regularly and on time, and we saw that they are contented with conveying only general information on the subject in the report.

"The civil society representatives we interviewed in our field research also said that their views on mother language rights have never been asked."

(AÖ/DCE/SD)