COMMENTARY | PROF. MEHMET EFE ÇAMAN
Why is Turkish society afraid of differences? Why do people expect everyone to be similar as if they came out of a mold? What are the underlying reasons for perceiving those who are different as a threat? Why does it make some people uncomfortable when others speak a different language, have a different lifestyle, prefer different music, or have lighter or darker skin?
I’m writing this article on International Mother Language Day. In a country where speaking in one’s mother tongue in parliament is recorded as ‘spoke in an unidentifiable language’ or simply written as ‘X’ in the minutes, is it really possible to say that mother tongues are valued and respected in Turkey today?
Languages other than Turkish are spoken in Turkey. I think I learned about the existence of other languages in Turkey a bit earlier than most people. Just like Kurds, Arabs, Armenians, Bosniaks, Roma, Greeks, Circassians, Laz, Syriacs, and others. Why can’t children from families where Turkish is not spoken feel comfortable in Turkey? Today, a post by Alin Ozinian broke my heart. It summarized the situation so well! Can you imagine, as a small child, her mother had to tell her, ‘Don’t call me mama on the street!’ What could be more natural than a child addressing their mother in their mother tongue? Saying ‘anne’ is as pure and beautiful as saying ‘mama’. And even after decades, you remember not being able to say ‘mama’ to your mother in your own language! Can this be forgotten? What kind of place is a state and society that forces a mother to warn her child about such a thing? Does it make you proud that a little Armenian girl had to address her mother as the state expected, learning this at such a young age, and through her mother’s anxious warning? Did Turkey prove its greatness this way?
Names of settlements in eastern and southeastern Anatolia are being changed. It’s a thousand-year-old tradition, the Turkification of place names. But it has been most intense and ruthless, and as a state policy, in the last 100 years. First, they changed the names of places vacated by Armenians and Greeks. Then, when no Armenian and Greek traces remained, it was the turn of Kurds, Arabs, and Syriacs. There are parents today who can’t give their children the names they want. This is what it means to be Kurdish in Turkey! Yet the state doing this today was condemning Todor Zhivkov’s communist regime for doing the same to the Turkish minority in Bulgaria in the late 1980s, calling it assimilation! So, when it comes to their ‘kinsmen’ in Bulgaria, assimilation is bad, but when it comes to Kurds, it’s no problem, is that it?
The Turkish state doesn’t like what’s different. Society is like water. It takes the shape of its container. The state manufactures that container. The Turkish state is the state of Turks. Its name is Turkey, and in this state, only those who say ‘I am Turkish’ deserve to be happy. Turks can’t have a problem with this anyway. But the existence of non-Turks depends on their acceptance of Turkishness. Those who insist on not being Turkish are assimilated. Bad things happen to those who don’t assimilate. The state might collectively exterminate you, or in more merciful periods, sign exchange agreements to send you somewhere. Or a Kurdish child starting school gets beaten when speaking their own language. Poor Kurdish villagers who don’t know Turkish are scolded in court. They are not allowed to use interpreters.
My mother’s side is of Cretan origin. Muslim Cretans who migrated to Turkey in the early 1900s. When they were settled in the Izmir region, they had only a single wooden suitcase. Cretan Muslims are Muslim Greeks. They didn’t know Turkish when they arrived. They were despised, pushed around. As in all of Europe, in Crete too, they called the native people who converted to Islam ‘became Turkish’. Turkish and Muslim were used synonymously. For this reason, not knowing Turkish in Crete was never a problem. Their ethnic and linguistic identity being Greek wasn’t an issue for the Ottoman Empire either, as the family continued to speak their mother tongue for centuries. But when they came to Turkey, they were called ‘infidels!’ I think it wouldn’t have mattered if they were non-Muslim. But this was done despite them being Muslim. Imagine what was done to Christian Greeks! I remember very well my grandmother saying some things to me in Greek, singing lullabies or songs. She looked after me for many years. She was a loving, incredibly intelligent, witty person. She cooked wonderfully – of course, she was Cretan! Whenever the family got together, while the children and grandchildren spent time among themselves, my grandmother, great aunts (her sisters), and great uncle (her brother) would start chatting in Greek among themselves. They would talk like engines, continuing their loving conversations with laughter. I would always visit her during summer holidays, staying with her for weeks. It was the time of single-television households. We would watch great films on Greek channels, and she would translate for me. A few words in Greek, a couple of children’s songs! This is all that remains of my grandmother’s ‘mother tongue’ with me.
My grandmother and her generation chose not to speak Greek with their children. They perceived teaching them Greek as a threat. They sacrificed their mother tongue for the safety of their children. Let them be happy, peaceful, and most importantly, safe! After that generation, a culture disappeared. What happened corresponds to genocide in United Nations literature. Yes, the crime of genocide is not just about exterminating a people en masse. It is also genocide to destroy a people’s culture – especially their mother tongue.
Today, Kurds are experiencing who knows how many times more of this drama that happened in our family. For a hundred years, with conscious and programmed assimilation, the connection between Kurds and their culture has been severed. Like Alin Ozinian’s mother or my grandmother, Kurdish mothers are also forced to speak Turkish with their children. Kurdish children, especially those living in metropolises, cannot learn Kurdish. Even if they do, Turkish becomes their primary mother tongue, they think in Turkish, and become completely alienated from their culture.
What is it that makes people fear their origins! What is it that makes people hide their roots! What is it that prevents people from passing on the culture they inherited from their ancestors to their children! In the twenty-first century, doesn’t a state that still does this and a society that largely approves of it deserve criticism? Shouldn’t we say things are going wrong? Shouldn’t we write that these actions are barbaric? Why don’t those who criticize when Bulgaria, the Soviets, or China do this, criticize when the same happens to Kurds, Armenians, Syriacs, Arabs, or Greeks?
The state cannot tell us who we are. Moreover, the state cannot expect to pour us like water into whatever mold it wants and expect us to take that shape. States that do this take their place in the darkest pages of history as humanity’s shame. Many states that committed such crimes in the past – for example, Canada, Germany, France, America – approach their past critically and, most importantly, teach these historical mistakes to new generations in their schools. However, Turkey today continues the same ethnic homogenization policies it implemented in the early 1900s. In the school curriculum, a historical doctrine built on ethnic Central Asian Turkish racism is imposed on students. The state still tells millions of people who and what they are, and crushes those who object.
World Mother Language Day reminds us that differences are valuable. Reform must be very comprehensive! Cosmetic changes will not end this primitiveness. We have a very difficult task ahead.
Source: tr724.com
