When Kurdish emigrants from Eastern Turkey are studied, one first thinks of the Kurdish emigrants in Europe and the Americas. And yet, a particularly large Kurdish diaspora from Eastern Turkey can be found within Turkey itself, having resettled in western Turkey’s metropolises. This article seeks to discuss recent sociolinguistic developments both in the Kurdish-speaking regions of Eastern Turkey (Northern Kurdistan/Bakur) and in the Kurdish communities in western Turkey (i.e., in the diaspora). My focus is on the two largest so-called ‚minority languages‘ of Turkey: Kurmanji and Zazaki—with the guiding issue of interest being language policy. And here again, my interest is twofold: first, Turkey’s language policy towards its minorities, particularly towards Kurdish, is at stake; and second, the language policy within the Kurdish movement towards Kurdish is depicted, including its recent paradigm shift, and with particular consideration of gender aspects. Recent developments give rise to doubts and yet hope that Kurdish will continue to serve as a language of private life, but also spread to everyday public visibility and prestige in Turkey.
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Linguistic minorities in Turkey and Turkic-Speaking minorities of the periphery
Language plays an important role for the identity building of nation states and smaller linguistic communities. The authors of this volume present different aspects of the mutual influences between linguistic identity, political dominance, religious denomination, and the social, political, and historical frameworks in which language choice or maintenance take place. Another major issue is the expression of a specific culture as reflected in literature and religious texts. Examples presented include Anatolia and the peripheries of Turkey, such as the Balkans, Greece, the Caucasus, the northern Black Sea region, Cyprus, and Iraq. In these regions, most speakers of minority languages are bi- or multilingual, while the distribution of spoken varieties often does not coincide with political borders, which cut through much older areas of settlement or historical domains. Across the greater area, the long-lasting and at times extensive contacts of genealogically unrelated languages, representing the Turkic, Indo-European, Semitic, and South Kartvelian families, have led to considerable structural changes and linguistic convergence. These contacts have also contributed to the formation of characteristic regional traits in the cultures of the different peoples of these regions.