One of the important problems facing the Kurdish language— in addition to the prohibitions and efforts at suppression which have impeded its development over the past hundred years— is the lack of a standardized vocabulary. Kurdish, marked by a number of different dialects, is also still written in three different alphabets, which makes it all the more complicated to establish a common vocabulary. On the other hand, developments in the fields of science and technology, and especially the widespread use of the internet in the countries where Kurds live, have created a new opportunity to establish a common vocabulary. Yet the fact that different alphabets are in use still poses challenges to standardization efforts.
Kurds generally speak in three different dialects. Among these dialects, Kurmanji has been used since the 9th and 10th centuries and has been the language of instruction in madrasas in Kurdistan for centuries. The collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the beginning of the 20th century and the emergence of nation-states brought about a much more disadvantageous situation for the Kurdish language. The division of the Kurds among several nation-states, including Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria, led to the rise of a more systematic suppression of the Kurdish language.
Although Kurmanji (the Northern dialect) has been the language of Classical Kurdish literature for nearly a thousand years, it lost its position as a language of education in schools and madrasas in the 20th century. Although Iraq was under the control of Great Britain from 1918 to 1930, which provided an opportunity for the use of Kurdish in Iraqi Kurdistan, Sorani (the Central dialect) came to prominence as the language of instruction there. This development came at the behest of Turkey, which entered into diplomatic talks with the British to discourage the use of Kurmanji in Northern Iraq— despite the large number of Kurmanji speakers living in the region. Such a policy served Turkish political interests, as the Kurds of Turkey speak mostly Kurmanji and Zazaki. By encouraging the cultivation of Sorani in British-controlled Northern Iraq, Turkey succeeded in complicating the language situation of Kurds on both sides of the border.
Kurmanji, the primary language of Classical Kurdish literature since the 10th century, has not been used in Iraqi Kurdistan. Furthermore, the fact that Sorani is written in a modified Arabic alphabet has made the issue of language unity and common terminology even more complicated. If Great Britain had provided education in Iraq in Kurmanji, which was the dialect of 65-70% of the Kurdish community, today the Kurdish language would have reached a very important stage in terms of establishing a common language and shared vocabulary. This, however, did not happen. Instead, due both to Turkey’s political influence and to the increasing number of Sorani-dialect speakers in Arbil and Sulaimaniya, the Sorani dialect gained prominence. In fact, the Kurmanji-speaking population of Iraq in the early 20th century was no less numerous than the Sorani-speaking population, especially if one considers the Ezidi Kurds in Iraqi territory. But Great Britain ignored this reality. In particular, the Kurds around Mosul were considered the easiest group to assimilate. Indeed, the large Sunni Arab population and their power in the political domain accelerated the assimilation of Kurmanji speakers.
The Democratic Approach and the Authoritarian Approach
In the process of nation-building one of the most difficult issues—perhaps the most difficult one—is to agree on language policies which will yield a language that can be spoken and understood by the whole nation. There are roughly two ways of solving the issue of generating a common language: the democratic approach and the authoritarian approach. In a democratic approach, it is essential to adopt as common language the dialect or regional variety that is dominant in a particular region of the country. I personally do not know of any society, or rather any state, which has been able to produce a solution to the common language problem with this approach.
When it comes to establishing a common language, we have to accept that the authoritarian approach is much more widely used. Those who adopt this approach impose one dialect, which is dominant in a certain region of the country, as the official language of the nation as a whole, extending it to the entire public, including ethnic and linguistic minorities. Examples from recent history include Istanbul Turkish in Turkey, Parisian French in France, and Prussian German in Germany. In the nation-building phase, as in the case of Germany, the elevation of one principality and subsumation of others under its leadership may not be felt as an imposition. In the context of classical Kurdish literature, the adoption of the language spoken within the borders of the Botan Principality as a written language was due to the political weight of the Botan Principality with respect to the other Kurdish principalities. Due to this political power and the respect the Botan Principality enjoyed among all Kurds, Celadet Bedirhan and the Hawar School intellectuals did not encounter any objections or resistance from any other Kurdish community or movement when they used the Botan dialect as the basis of their literary language.
In fact, even up to the beginning of the 20th century, the lingua franca of Kurdish society was Kurmanji, with its strong classical literary tradition. Until the 1950s and 1960s, from Sivas to the Caucasus and on to Central Asia, only Kurdish was used in spoken communication. But after the 1970s the spread of television caused a rapid decline in Kurdish-language use and led to the rise of spoken Turkish among the Kurds. Previously, the Kurmanji dialect of Kurdish was spoken not only by ethnic Kurmanj, but also by minorities in Kurdistan such as Turks, Armenians, Arabs and Assyrians. In the 20th century, though Kurmanji gradually ceased to be the language of education, it remained the language of transaction in the streets and marketplace until the mid-1960s.
Such widespread use of Kurdish was perceived as a threat by the Kemalist regime. Ismet Inonu’s August 21, 1935, Eastern Expedition Report states:
If Erzincan becomes a Kurdish center, I am afraid that Kurdistan will be established. In Van and Erzincan, we must hurry and gradually build strong Turkish masses in Muş and the plain of Elazığ. The most effective way to Turkify Kurds is to educate Turks and Kurds in the same schools. Diyarbakır is a critical place where we can easily implement our measures to become a strong center of Turkishness. The establishment of a military administration with the formation of Dersim province must be connected to our plan… Kurds must be assimilated. Turkish centers should be established against the spread of Kurdishness.
Assimilation of the Kurds has been the consistent goal of the Turkish Republic since its foundation. A Kurdish proverb says: Heft meseleyên hirçê hene, hemû jî li ser xwarina hermiyê ne (The bear has seven stories, and they’re all about eating pears). Turkey does not even consider the Kurds’ right to education in the mother tongue for their children. No regime has ever shown any interest in this regard. And this disregard has been seen as critical to the Turkish Republic’s survival.
Standardization in the Absence of a State
While the common language issue was solved in many countries with the emergence of the modern state, by relying on the resources and opportunities of the state itself, this problem has continued to vex Kurds across the 20th century. As mentioned earlier, at the beginning of the 20th century, 65-70% of the Kurdish community spoke the Kurmanji dialect and, in a tremendous boost to linguistic unity, a significant segment of speakers of other dialects also knew or understood it. It was therefore at the beginning of the 20th century, when nation-states began to emerge in the Middle East, that the Kurds came their closest to building a nation-state, because of their linguistic dominance in the region.
Today, despite some political gains in Iraqi Kurdistan and Rojava, the Kurds lag far behind the linguistic unity of a century ago. Especially in Turkey, the Kurdish language is no longer the most valuable heritage Kurds leave to their children. The assimilation policy of the Turkish state has achieved tremendous success over the last 30-40 years. At this stage the state no longer needs to impose assimilation by brute force as it did previously. Televisions that the Kurds buy with their own money are all it takes. Recently in villages and towns I made the following observation: The older generation speaks Kurdish among themselves and Turkish with their children. Just 15-20 years ago, in many Kurdish families the grandparents did not speak Turkish, the grandchildren spoke Turkish, and parents were interpreters between the two generations. Now a generation that does not speak a word of Kurdish is growing to adulthood.
Kurdish politics must also bear some responsibility for the status of the Kurdish langauge in Turkey. HDP’s predecessor parties (1990-1993 HED-DEP, 1994-2003 HADEP, 1997-2005 DEHAP, 2005-2012 DTP) and HDP itself, which was established in 2012, have never been consistent about championing Kurdish as the language of education and training. In 2000, with the encouragement of DEHAP, thousands of university students filed a petition with the University administration asking that Kurdish be made available as an optional language in schools; approximately 2000 students were expelled from their schools as a result of signing the petition. However, in 2013, when the state did give the opportunity to teach Kurdish as an optional language in schools, HDP ignored the gesture, instead reiterating, “We demand the right to education in the mother tongue.” Yet if 2-3 million Kurds in Turkey had applied for elective language courses at that time, the situation today would be very different and at least a million books in Kurdish would have entered Kurdish homes.
The issue of a common vocabulary in the Kurdish language is becoming increasingly complex. The fact that the Sorani dialect stands as the official dialect in Iraqi Kurdistan makes the problem of language standardization more difficult for all Kurds. The lack of a visionary language policy in Iraqi Kurdistan gives rise to pessimism about the prospects for unification of language and terminology. In the last 30 years the Iraqi Kurdistan administration could at least have pioneered writing in a unified alphabet, or have made Kurmanji more prominent in broadcast television, which would have supported the efforts of Kurds in Turkey to resist assimilation. Moreover, Kurdish-language publishing could have been encouraged by government assistance to publishers. But none of these was done. The websites of Rudaw and Kurdistan 24 (two Kurdish news outlets based in Iraqi Kurdistan) still give more space to Turkish than to Kurdish.
Shared Terminology for Modern Concepts
At this stage, Kurds have fallen a hundred years behind in the quest to create a unified language. It is, however, still possible to develop a shared set of terminology for modern concepts. As is well known, modern terminology emerged and developed rapidly with industrialization. So, for example, Kurdish is at a good level when it comes to the terminology of agriculture, raising livestock, and botany. However, there are serious shortcomings in science, philosophy, law, sociology, economics, management and advanced technology.
As long as we have the means to do so, we must use our dialects in education in proportion to their presence among our population, but we must also have a unified terminology for modern concepts. If we can reach consensus on the terms for modern concepts in Kurmanji, Sorani and Zazaki, we will have passed a very important threshold in terms of creating a unified language. Otherwise, if each dialect goes its own way, after a while each dialect will appear as a separate language—a development that will only deepen our political division.
In order to establish a unified terminology for modern concepts, we must work harder. We must cooperate and collaborate with linguists, researchers and scholars in the fields of Kurdish folklore, history and culture for the goal of creating a unified terminology.
For the last thirty years, I have pursued my own efforts to develop a unified terminology in Kurdish. In 2014, I published Ferhenga Zanistên Civakî (A Glossary of Social Sciences) with the publishing house Nûbihar. Since 2013, I have been compiling a glossary of academic terms together with my master’s and doctoral students. There were about 2700 concepts covered in my 2014 book. My work over the past few years has expanded on those concepts. I am now at work on a dictionary of academic terms, which at present consists of about five thousand items. It is available online at ferhengaakademik.org
Abdullah Kıran is Professor of Political Science and Public Administration at Mus Alparslan University, Turkey.