| Turkey's linguistic graveyard | ||
| By Anita McNaught | ||
Unesco has classified 15 languages spoken in Turkey as "endangered" and criticised the country for not doing enough to save them. ... But l... many Turkish speakers view any diversification of Turkey's "Turkishness" as a threat to the integrity of the nation state. One of the languages on the endangered list is Laz. Laz has no shared roots with Turkish, Arabic, Persian or Russian. ,,, apart from its Georgian cousin dialect, Mingrelian, it seems to be a unique relic of antiquity. Although the Laz empire - known for centuries as 'Colchis' - was wide ranging and successful, it was a trading culture with a primarily oral tradition. ..., it had no recorded written history or alphabet. .. Many Laz people in the northeast of the country defend the centralisation of culture in Turkey as "necessary".... "If you fight the state, they will crush you," one teacher told us. "But if you don't resist them, then you can do what you want." .. "If you gave every ethnic group education in its own language, this country would fall apart," they told us. .... ..... Primary and secondary education in Turkey is entirely in Turkish, and the curriculum is inviolable. Teachers who introduce unregulated 'ethnic additions' are removed from the job. A lesson for Arizona? |
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Alien and Sedition Acts, part IX ... lessons in Laz from Turkey
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2 comments:
It is not a correct approach to say that in Turkey every kind of language other than Turkish is strictly forbidden to speak. But in some way your post is showing some past realities. If you look at Turkish Republic history, you will see that for a major period of the recent history of republic, army was the hidden political figure behind of the "democratic governments" in Turkey. This is why these governments which were supported by "democrat American governments" committed this kind of human rights violation. But this is not the end of the story. Today government official TV channel is broadcasting in many minority languages including Kurdish, arabic,etc.
Tx for the post.
I think the underlying issue is whether the Kurds need a country. The line between "people" and "country" is a hard one. The Kurds division into Iraq, Iran, Turkey, etc seems to me to be unfaor the their legacy and a remaining reflection of imperialism .. including Turkish imperialism as well as Soviet, European, and American.
The US, my country is odd because we are a pastiche .. an ensemble of cultures that has institutionalized the concept of American by choice. I do not think that applies to the Kurds anymore than it does to Chechnians, the Basque, the Israelis, or the Tibetans,
Blessed is the people who have a recognized homeland! Blessed are people who live in multicultural societies.
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