MERCATOR :: News

April 2004

FRESH AIR FOR TURKEY’S ‘OTHER’ LANGUAGES (IWPR – Caucasus Reporting)

April 2004 – After Turkey’s newly-started friendlier political attitude towards linguistic diversity, specially after the government’s adoption in June last year of a package of legal reforms with a view to meet EU accession requirements, as well as, more specifically, the recently adopted legal measures on broadcasting in non-official languages and on the teaching of non-official languages (see previous Mercator-Legislation news), languages other than Turkish are being brought up in the political debate. Although Kurdish is certainly the most widely-spoken and politically visible non-official linguistic group in Turkey, voices have risen in order not to miss the opportunity for other languages spoken in this country, namely Circassian, Abkhaz or Laz, whose presence in Turkey dates back to the forced diaspora after the Russian occupation of the North Caucasus in 1864. Although the historical ban on the use of languages other than Turkish has been officially implemented since the foundation of the Republic of Turkey back in 1923, this has not prevented speakers from teaching their languages in private institutions. Nevertheless, all these languages are facing a rapid decline in their social use and transmission to younger generations, which, according to experts, could lead to their total extinction in no more than 50 years. In this respect, an effective and fruitful implementation of the aforementioned new legal possibilities can only be fulfilled if trained teachers and modern pedagogical materials are available, and as soon as the debate on the script to be used for these languages is settled: either the traditional one –Cyrillic– or the Latin one. Moreover, the existing geographical separateness from the kin language community is also felt to be necessarily taken into account.