Certainly the Turkish state and political elite have not come to this point willingly. From now on nothing will be the same, not just concerning restrictions on the Kurdish language, but also the overall Kurdish question. It will now be impossible to argue that the Turkish state is an ethnically homogenous nation state. We will, in time, discover post nation-state political models of coexistence within a recognized multiethnic social community. The use of Kurdish by a state institution will be the beginning of many other steps. The Higher Education Board (YÖK) has just announced that Kurdish language and literature departments will be established at two universities. TRT's Kurdish TV station will set a precedent to make all other restrictions on Kurdish obsolete. The ban on the use of Kurdish by municipalities and political parties in their political activities can no longer be maintained. Education in Kurdish, at least optional Kurdish courses, will soon be discussed as legitimate requests from Turkish citizens with Kurdish origins.
What is more important is that people at large will realize that their Kurdish friends, neighbors and colleagues have a distinct language they speak freely without harming their relationships. Hearing Kurdish more often in Turkey is likely to create a political and social milieu in which the Kurdish language will no longer be viewed as a divisive political issue, but as something "normal." Normalization of the Kurdish language will be the very beginning of the normalization of the Kurdish presence, with its cultural heritage and rights, in this country.
To understand the scale of this change, we have to remember that two decades earlier not only the state, but mainstream political leaders in Turkey denied the existence of an ethnic group called "Kurds." It was in the beginning of the 1990s that the government (the political elite) recognized the "Kurdish reality." It was only three years ago that a Turkish prime minister first spoke of the "Kurdish question." It was again three years ago that the state-owned TRT started broadcasting in Kurdish for a half-hour each day, along with broadcasts in other languages. Even this was formulated under the name of "public broadcasting in mother tongues other than Turkish."
The speaking of the Kurdish language was banned by the military junta after the 1980 military coup, and this ban continued until 1991. Many people were persecuted because of speaking, publishing or singing in Kurdish.
Given the way Kurdish has been treated by the Turkish state over the decades, the establishment of a Kurdish TV channel by the state is a true revolution. Moreover, I think it is an apology from the state to its Kurdish citizens.
Yet almost all opposition groups in Parliament opposed it. The Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) described it as an attempt by the government to divide Turkey into ethnic pieces. For a political party that needs the continuation of a Kurdish problem as the only ground for its existence in Turkish politics, this attitude may be understandable.
But what about the Democratic Society Party (DTP), which claims to represent the Kurdish identity? In a strange way, they are disturbed by the government initiative to establish a Kurdish TV channel. The argument that the government has introduced it in order to appeal to Kurdish voters in the region may be true. But does it warrant denying the historic importance of the recognition of the Kurdish language by the state? The DTP should have welcomed such a step, which no other government in the future will be able to take back.
Republican People's Party (CHP) leader Deniz Baykal did not surprise anyone on this issue. For him, the TRT Kurdish station is wrong. It means supporting a particular ethnic struggle. Moreover, Baykal argues that it is not acceptable to finance a Kurdish TV station with the tax revenues collected from 70 million people. By this I think he assumes that those 70 million people are ethnically Turks. Maybe Baykal still considers the Kurds to be "mountain Turks," as argued back in the 1930s.
