Nurcan Baysal on Kurdish language, culture and identity. Translated by Nazım Dikbas.

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It is 2 January 2017, a new year has only just arrived, it is a cold – very cold – day, and here I am trying to enter Şırnak city centre. An eight-month curfew ended only a few days ago. A many-kilometres-long queue of vehicles is lined up at the entrance of the city. And the queue is moving very slowly because every vehicle has to pass through several checkpoints. I wait for a while, then I decide to walk into Şırnak. I ask the driver to wait for me in the car, and set off on foot towards the checkpoint.

It resembles a border crossing rather than a regular control point. A large, semi-secluded zone has been erected from concrete blocks and barbed wire. Within this zone, there are tracks like those you encounter at border crossings. They have even labelled them: Track 1-Cabin, Track 2-Cabin, Track 3-Cabin, Track 4-Cabin. At the entrance to the zone, female and male police officers first carry out a body search. Then our identity cards are collected for a criminal and administrative record check through GBT, the General Information Gathering System. Fifteen minutes later, our identity cards are returned and we enter the zone, pass through the tracks and the concrete blocks, and finally exit. It is at this precise point that I notice a fabric banner hanging across the entrance to the city: ‘Şırnak is a Turkish province.’

I begin to walk uphill towards the city centre. Soon, I meet up with a friend, a local. We pass through demolished neighbourhoods. Şırnak is a city I know very well, but I cannot see a single street, park or building I recognise. A while later, there is only emptiness left around me – a flat emptiness that at its very end meets the grey sky. I am walking in emptiness. Then I ask my friend, ‘What about the marketplace? Where is the marketplace?’ ‘This vacant spot, here, this is it,’ she responds. ‘This is exactly where the marketplace was.’ I am horrified. I collapse onto a rock on the ground. The tears I have managed to hold back since the morning begin to flow. ‘Gone! Gone!’ I cry. “Şırnak is gone!’

Şırnak was only one of many Kurdish cities destroyed during the curfews and clashes of 2015 and 2016. The city has – or perhaps I should say had – twelve neighbourhoods, of which eight were completely destroyed. Şırnak, as we once knew it, was no more. The same can be said for Sur, Nusaybin, Yüksekova, Cizre and Silopi. Ancient Kurdish towns and cities, centuries, even millennia old, destroyed within the space of a few months. We were no more.

This was not only a physical destruction. After August 2015, Kurds, as a people, were erased from many fields of social life in Turkey – from local administrations and civil society to culture and arts. The Kurdish issue suddenly became ‘an issue of terrorism.’ We, writers and human rights defenders who made known the rights violations taking place in the area, were ‘supporters of terrorism.’ Kurdish politicians and activists were ‘members of a terrorist organisation.’ We had gone back 40 years. Kurds no longer existed; instead, there were people who, when they walked on snow, made the sound ‘kart-kurt.’ There was no Kurdish issue; there was a terrorism issue. A place called Kurdistan had never existed. Not only mainstream media, but many others, from publishing houses to art galleries and theatres, began to censor Kurds and work related to the Kurdish issue. Suddenly, they acted as if a people that form a quarter of Turkey’s population – 20 million people, 20 million citizens – had disappeared. As if they had been cast into a dark well. Life went on, as if the curfews didn’t exist, as if there was no destruction and violence in the Kurdish provinces, as if fires weren’t raging across Kurdish land, as if people weren’t dying every day.

Once upon a time, when the Kurds did exist

Of course, this was not our first ‘disappearance.’ According to the ups and downs of the state’s Kurdish policy over the past century, we have sometimes existed, and sometimes we haven’t.

In the late 80s and in the 90s, we did not exist. One of the first sentences we heard from our teachers at school was ‘There are no Kurds, they are all simply mountain Turks.’ And we, too, after all, wanted to be ‘Turkish and happy’ as our Oath proclaimed, mandatorily read out and repeated every single day at schools across the country before lessons started.

Thus, Kenan Evren, the general who came to power with the 12 September 1980 military coup d’état and was President throughout my childhood years, declared from our single-channel TVs: ‘There is no such thing as a Kurd. This word is in actual fact a concept that derives from the sounds of “kart, kurt” which our people in the southeast make when they walk across the snow on the ground.’ We were children then, and we listened to the sounds we made as we walked on snow, and we tried our best not to make those ‘kart, kurt’ sounds. Tansu Çiller, a Prime Minister in the 90s, confirmed our non-existence, and often said on TV ‘There are no Kurds, there are terrorists.’

In any case, all along, we ‘terrorists’ were being physically destroyed. Our homes and neighbourhoods were emptying rapidly. Young Kurds were taking to the mountains in large numbers, and every day our number was on the decline. Some of us died in murders committed by ‘unknown assailants.’

After a lengthy period for us in limbo, Erdoğan, who came to power in the early 2000s, acknowledged our existence and called us his ‘Kurdish brothers and sisters.’ We were surprised: out of the blue, we existed again. The official Kurdish TV channel TRT Şeş was launched with a grand ceremony, departments of Kurdish language were opened at universities, and we regained the banned village and street names that had been changed in the 90s. Turks and Kurds together, we danced the halay, accompanied by Kurdish music. Hadn’t we been brothers and sisters for centuries, after all?

That brotherhood and sisterhood didn’t last long. When the peace process abruptly ended in July 2015, the time of non-existence began for us once again. Erdoğan began by announcing that ‘There is no Kurdish issue,’ adding ‘It would be discrimination to use the phrase “Kurdish issue”.’ Eventually he, too, ended up declaring, ‘There is no Kurdish issue, there is a terrorism issue.’

The war waged by kayyıms on Kurdish language and culture

Once the state decides you do not exist, it naturally has certain implications for your life in all its aspects.

On the morning of 11 September 2016, on the eve of a religious holiday, a new word entered our vocabulary: kayyım. Kurdish mayors were sent to prison, and the appointment of the first kayyıms – essentially unelected government officials replacing elected officials, – began. On 11 September 2016, kayyıms were appointed to two provincial municipalities and 25 district municipalities, and within a matter of a few months, kayyıms were in charge of 95 of the 102 municipalities won by representatives of the Kurdish movement in local elections.

Once the kayyıms were appointed, they set about destroying all that belonged to the Kurds. They began by demolishing symbols and monuments of Kurdish culture and history. From Orhan Doğan to Ehmedê Xanî, from Roboski to Uğur Kaymaz, all the sculptures and monuments in the region associated with Kurdish culture, or which referred to massacres committed by the state, were demolished. Then it was time, once again, to change the names of our main streets and side streets. All Kurdish names, including those given to parks, were replaced with Turkish names. Women’s centres were closed, cultural centres were closed, all that we were proud of in our cities was destroyed in a few months. Theatres, multilingual nurseries, libraries, music academies – all institutions that sought to keep Kurdish culture alive – were shut down. At the local elections held on 31 March 2019, the Peoples’ Democratic Party HDP once again won 69 municipalities, including three metropolitan municipalities. A few months later, kayyıms were appointed in Kurdish provinces and the newly elected mayors were sent to prison. The votes of millions of Kurds were ignored. Those kayyıms are still in office today.

This non-existence is reflected in our language, in our land, in everything about the Kurds. A piece of land, Kurdistan as a geographical territory, was made to disappear, just like the Kurds. The word Kurdistan, used in the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (TBMM) without causing any controversy during the peace process, was banned once the process was shelved. When the word was used, it was not taken down in parliamentary minutes and instead recorded as ‘X’. Members of parliament who used the word faced disciplinary investigations. Erdoğan, who in his speeches during the peace process had acknowledged the ‘existence of Kurdistan,’ now did not hold back from regularly telling Kurds who criticised him to ‘clear off to Kurdistan.’ In March 2019, in a speech he made in Gündoğan, he addressed HDP Co-chairperson Sezai Temelli with the words, ‘There is no Kurdistan here. If you are so desperate, there’s one in the north of Iraq. Clear off there.’

The situation is no different in parliament. Right after the end of the peace process, in November 2015, Leyla Zana’s speech in parliament was X’d. Since that day, no Kurdish has been allowed into parliamentary minutes. The mother tongue of at least 20 million citizens has become a language that gets X’d in the parliament that is supposed to represent those citizens.

From the days in the 40s, when Musa Anter was beaten up for whistling in Kurdish, we have arrived at the present day, when Dicle University students are jailed and prosecuted for precisely the same offence. From the 90s, when the great singer Ahmet Kaya was physically attacked for stating at a music awards ceremony that he planned to record a song in Kurdish, we arrive at the present day, when wedding-hall singers are detained for singing in Kurdish. In the last decade, Kurdish-language schools, Kurdish-language newspapers and magazines, Kurdish-language nurseries and Kurdish-language institutes at universities have all been closed. It is the 1940s all over again.

The people of this ‘unknown language’ have no value in public policies and public services either, of course. Today, the Ministry of Health publishes its brochures in six languages besides Turkish to provide better services. Those languages are French, Arabic, English, Russian, German and Persian. No services are provided in the language of its Kurdish citizens that form at least a quarter of the country’s population. In a similar manner, the Women’s Emergency Support App (KADES) of the General Directorate of Security provides services in six languages but not Kurdish. This is how the directorate introduces its KADES app on their official web site: ‘In six languages, only a single click away, in support of women.’ Even in an application aimed at protecting the safety of and preventing violence against women, there is no Kurdish, the mother tongue of citizens that form around a quarter of this country’s population.

We Kurds have not existed in the brochures of the Ministry of Health, in the announcements made on aeroplanes, in services provided at court houses. But it goes beyond that: we seem not to exist at all. Our language does not exist, our culture does not exist, our songs do not exist, our holidays do not exist, our elected officials do not exist. We Kurds don’t even exist in that single click offered by the app of the General Directorate of Security. And to be frank, it is painful to know all this.

Now, in the last few months, a new process has begun between the state and the PKK. The state calls it the process ‘Turkey without terror,’ while we Kurds prefer to call it the ‘peace process.’ Following the PKK’s decision to lay down arms and dissolve itself, we Kurds expect the state to take steps towards democratisation and, most significantly, the recognition of our existence, language and culture, with protection provided through constitutional guarantee. To be frank, we are tired, after a century of struggle between existence and non-existence. But we wish, at least, to leave our children a future where they won’t have to struggle to prove that they exist.

Ew Dibêjin ‘Hûn Tunene’; Em Dibêjin ‘Em Hene!’

Despite the policies of non-existence that have continued for the past 100 years, the fact is: we do not suddenly disappear when the state claims we do not exist. When our language is banned, we try other ways to keep it alive. When our political parties are closed, we open new ones, and choose new names for them, with acronyms formed of new combinations of letters. When our songs are banned, we whistle them. When our holidays are banned, we light our traditional Newroz fires within the safety of our gardens, or a secluded corner of our neighbourhoods. When our culture is prohibited, we become dengbejs, folk singers who keep alive Kurdish stories old and new, and we transmit our culture from one generation to the next through kilams, our songs that tell our stories. When our homes are burned down, when our villages are forcibly evacuated, we stubbornly and persistently – and sometimes despite knowing that our homes may be razed to the ground over and over again – return to our villages, and rebuild. When our trees and forests are burned, we feed the roots that remain, water them, strive to make them grow again. When our towns are levelled to the ground, we weave back their texture from scratch, knot by knot. It takes years, it takes decades, sometimes even a century. But we do not give up on ourselves, our language, our culture, our roots.

Although the Kurdish policy of the state has varied over the past century, in a sense, there has been continuity on the Kurdish side. In the face of all these policies of oppression and intimidation, Kurds continue to sing their songs, celebrate Newroz, dance the halay and speak their languages. Although there have been various challenges that have forced them to withdraw and regroup, the Kurdish people have never forsaken their identity, language and culture. The type of struggle may vary, but their demands do not. Those demands have been there for a century. The Kurdish people won’t step back from their demands, because without the fulfilment of those demands life will not be worth living.

It doesn’t matter within which country’s borders they live. The story of the Kurds has remained unchanged for the past century. This is a story that has been kneaded with blood, persecution, pain and struggle. A century-long denial continues. Yet neither the Kurdish issue nor the Kurds disappear simply by saying ‘they don’t exist.’

For Kurds, this is a matter of existence.

Let me end this piece with a phrase often used by Kurds:

Ew Dibêjin ‘Hûn Tunene’; Em Dibêjin ‘Em Hene!’

They say ‘you don’t exist’. We say, ‘we exist!’

This phrase is, I guess, the summary of the past century for us Kurds.

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Nurcan Baysal is a Kurdish human rights defender, journalist and writer from the city of Diyarbakir. She is one of the founders of Diyarbakır Political and Social Research Institute and the Platform to Save Women Kidnapped by ISIS. She is also one of the Middle East advisors of the Global Fund for Women and the Urgent Action Fund for Feminist Activism.

She is the author of O Gün (That Day); Ezidiler: 73. Ferman (Ezidis: 73rd Decree); O Sesler (Those Voices); a book of short stories, Yok Zamanı (The Time of Nothingness); co-author of Kürdistan’da Sivil Toplum (Civil Society in Kurdistan); and, most recently, We Exist: Being Kurdish in Turkey. 

She was awarded the Brave Women Journalists Award by the Italian Women Journalists Association in 2017, named 2018 Global Laureate for Human Rights Defenders at Risk by Front Line Defenders, and won the DW Freedom of Speech Award in 2020.