Anti-Kurdish language violence in schools
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This blog is part of Respond’s Kurdish storytelling project. Visit the main project page here.
By Raman Salah
While language violence occurs in many contexts, from disaster relief and humanitarian aid to legal, medical, and psychological support, one of the most insidious and intergenerationally significant sites of institutional language violence is the school system.
This is true across different cultures and settings where language violence against marginalized or indigenous languages is endemic. In America, for example, language violence has been institutionalized against Indigenous students in schools. The US education system specifically discriminates against students from non-English speaking homes. In Kurdistan, the situation is similar: the education system lies at the heart of maintaining and perpetuating the erasure of Kurdish identity and culture.
Kurdish speakers told Respond about their experiences of language violence in schools, both as students themselves and teachers. Though the exact form and degree of suppression of Kurdish in schooling varies across the four different regions of Kurdistan, they all share the common theme that students face explicit and implicit discrimination, suppression, and even punishment for expressing their Kurdish identity in schools.
Bakur (Turkish-occupied Kurdistan) - Kurmanji and Zazakî Kurdish
“Successive Turkish governments have considered the teaching of the Kurdish language as a divisive, existential threat rather than an instrument of unity and a symbol of the richness of the diversity of the Turkish state.”
In Turkey, it is generally illegal to use Kurdish as the language of instruction. Article 42 of the Turkish Constitution rendered illegal the “teaching of any language other than Turkish as a mother tongue to Turkish citizens at any institution of education.” While restrictions on Kurdish language education slightly loosened in the last decade, there have been quick rollbacks of any progress, leading to the shutting down of the few Kurdish language institutions that were opened for a few years back in 2013. However, some schools defy this ban, with teachers providing Kurdish-language underground and in private homes even under the threat of being arrested and labeled a terrorist.
“Imagine you are a child and you grow up with your parents in a village where everyone speaks the same language, but when it comes to your education and schooling, you start learning in a language you have never heard before,” Rojda Arslan, a Zazakî speaker, said. “The children were forced to do difficult tasks, learn math, physics, and other subjects in the dominant language.”
Denying Kurdish children education in their native language contributes to poor performance, low self esteem, and other negative outcomes, according to research and several Respond interviewees. Jiyan*, a Kurmanji speaker and teacher from Bakur, told Respond about her experience with Kurdish students, during the February earthquake in Turkey and Syria:
“I revealed my own Kurdish identity, establishing a connection that helped them integrate. … An additional layer of complexity surfaced as students were initially hesitant to disclose their Kurdish identity. The fear of potential ostracization and the unfamiliarity of being the only Kurds in a private school weighed heavily on them. … one of them, unfortunately, struggled to adapt, eventually leaving the school, while the other returned to Malatya, expressing a desire to enhance her Kurdish language.”
Like the students, Sevim Zelal Tonbul experienced implicit and explicit suppression of her native Kurmanji while studying in Turkey:
“My mother tongue is Northern Kurdish (Kurmanji), and I didn't learn Turkish until I started school. Our teachers were Turkish; they didn't speak Kurdish and there was no teaching assistant for Kurdish students. … We were poor children who didn’t understand Turkish because we were born in Kurdish families and our first language is Kurdish. … We were forced each morning to read a declaration of being Turkish. We were aware that we were Kurds who spoke Kurmanji, but we were warned not to say anything in school or we would get into trouble.”
Sevim’s story reveals the way Turkish language was weaponized to stamp out more than spoken Kurmanji, but students’ Kurdish self-identification more broadly. Research has found that though Kurds make up around a fifth of Turkey’s population, few can speak, read, or write Kurdish – a 2019 survey, for example, found that less than half of Kurdish respondents aged 18-30 could speak their mother tongue.
“The perception of the Kurdish language as hazardous has yielded grave consequences for generations of Kurdish people in accessing their fundamental rights, including education, in Turkey. Kurds have long faced systematic oppression and segregation within the educational system and society. … More than twenty million Kurds have had their human right to be educated in their mother tongue that international human rights law requires usurped.”
Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
Rojava (Syrian-occupied Kurdistan) - Kurmanji Kurdish
Tavge*, a teacher, translator, and Kurmanji speaker from Rojava, fled with her family to Bashur during the Syrian Civil War in 2011. Denied access to language classes in Kurdish at schools, Tavge* learned Kurmanji from her parents:
“I never studied my mother tongue at school because the official language at schools was Arabic and we were never allowed to speak our native language at school … [and] I always faced violent and hateful actions from my classmates.”
Bashur (Iraqi-occupied and semi-autonomous Kurdistan) - Sorani and Kelhorî Kurdish
After decades of organizing and political struggle, Sorani finally became an official language in Bashur in 2005. Nevertheless, Kurds in Iraq continue to face language-based violence in everyday life.
Berivan*, a journalist and political activist from Bashur, is a Sorani Kurdish speaker with very proficient knowledge of Northern Kurdish (Kurmanji) as well as Turkish. He studied in Turkey and encountered exclusionary language throughout his studies. He described teaching and learning Kurdish in different Kurdish speaking areas:
“In Iran, Kurds are not allowed to study the language. We have figures like Zara Muhammadi, who went to prison for teaching the language. … In Turkey, Kurds cannot study in their own language to this day.”
Sarah Ali Mohammad Amin is a college student, Sorani speaker from Kirkuk City, which the Iraqi constitution considers a disputed area between Kurdistan Region and Federal Government of Iraq (FGI). Her experience of anti-Kurdish language violence extended beyond primary schooling to her university studies.
“In the city's universities, professors conduct classes mainly in Arabic, creating significant challenges for the Kurdish students who make up half of the student body. As a result, Kurdish parents have started sending their children to Arabic schools to facilitate their university studies. While this may not appear significant to some, it poses a considerable issue for these students. They struggle with reading and writing in their mother tongue, leading to a diminished ability to speak, write, and read in Kurdish.” (Emphasis added.)
Rojhelat (Iranian-occupied Kurdistan) - Sorani, Kurmanji, and Hewramî Kurdish
While the Iranian regime publicly praises the Kurdish community to garner their political and economic support, Kurdish teachers and activists are closely monitored, targeted, harassed, and arrested almost on a daily basis. Unfortunately, some Kurdish language activists have not necessarily made it out of the Iranian prison system alive.
One such figure whose memory remains alive among Kurdish and progressive Iranian communities is Ferzad Kemenger, a Kurdish elementary school teacher who was charged with moharebeh, or “warring against God” by the Islamic Republic of Iran. Even while languishing in Iranian prison for four years, where he was subject to torture and pressure to confess a crime he did not commit, Kemenger wrote prolifically about his language and his identity. His last letters, smuggled out of Evin Prison, inquired: “is it possible to be a teacher where there is a drought of justice and fairness and not teach the alphabet of hope and equality?” Kemenger was executed by hanging in 2010.
Gordyaen Jermayi, a human rights activist from the Urmia city, where a majority of the population speaks Kurmanji Kurdish and teach themselves Sorani Kurdish, lived through this context as a young person. His early struggles are part of what pushed him to fight for language justice as an adult.
“I reside in Urmia, a Kurmanji-speaking city in Rojhelat. We learn Kurmanji informally from our family, while Sorani, another dialect I speak, was acquired from classmates and online sources. The ongoing violence extends beyond suppressing Kurdish language to portraying it and other non-Persian languages as 'uncivilized.' Authorities push for perfect Persian in schools, equating proficiency with education. This coercion affects all aspects of our lives. I encountered Persian language oppression in first grade when the teacher punished us for not speaking it fluently. Non-Persian-speaking children face linguistic barriers imposed by teachers, hindering their academic performance. This challenge often leads to high dropout rates. The exclusion of these languages in education jeopardizes their survival.” (Edited for clarity and length.)
Gordyaen elaborated on the existence of various online resources for learning different dialects of Kurdish, including online teaching platforms, language learning apps, podcasts, online dictionaries, and free online publications. Despite these resources, Gordyaen said, “These kinds of resources can help preserve the Kurdish language but they're not perfect. [Kurdish] needs to be present in the educational system to be fully protected.”
The 2023 Turkey-Syria earthquake and its aftermath brought to light deep-rooted patterns of discrimination and neglect of Kurdish language that contributed to the magnitude of destruction that disproportionately befell Kurdish communities.
However, as described here, this systemic language violence predates and extends far beyond the quake – including suppression of Kurdish identity in schools across Bakur, Rojava, Bashur, and Rojhelat. This violence has been a feature of education across Kurdistan for the last several decades at least; despite this, young Kurds’ fight for justice continues.
*Several names have been changed to protect the privacy and safety of our project participants and their loved ones. Because of the fact that several Kurdish names have been outlawed across Kurdistan by occupying regimes, we note here that we have chosen to use names that are banned.