NAV-DEM: Kurds should defend their language

The Kurdish Language Day is celebrated on 15 May as proposed by Kurdish literary scholars and linguists and it has made a great contribution to the development of Kurdish.

The German Democratic Kurdish Community Center (NAV-DEM) has issued a written statement to celebrate Kurdish Language Day.

The statement underlined that the Turkish State has carried out all sorts of different plans in order to deny not only Kurds but their language and culture.

The statement also indicated the policies pursued by the AKP-MHP fascist alliance as some of the worse in the history of the Turkish Republic as far as annihilation of Kurds is concerned.

The statement added:

“The Kurdish Language Day is celebrated on 15 May as proposed by Kurdish literary scholars and linguists and it has made a great contribution to the development of Kurdish. Today, in Rojava, in the Kurdistan federal region of Iraq, all primary and secondary schools as well as universities are giving Kurdish education. There are dozens of Kurdish institutes and European universities have opened Kurdish language and literature departments. Unfortunately many have not been able to enjoy education in Kurdish during the worse year of its ban.

(…) A people's freedom can only be possible if this people’s language is free. And the freedom of a language can only be achieved through the abolition of all obstacles to its use, in daily life education, communication-publishing to organizing and politics, to the free use of all areas. Otherwise a language deprived of these possibilities exists in conditions of heavy oppression and assimilation and will have difficulties to survive”.

NAV-DEM urged all the people, mainly women and young people, to speak their mother tongue: “We should consider thinking in one’s mother tongue, speaking, writing shaping our thoughts and ideas. We call upon our people to resist against the racist-fascist groups, that despise and insult the Kurdish language. We need to protect our national existence and culture against all those who attack Kurdish youths because they speak or sing in Kurdish.

We invite all our institutions, our friends, and especially the Kurdish people, to demonstrate their national integrity attitude and to use their votes wisely on the forthcoming 24 June elections”.