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Turkey to translate Quran into Kurdish
Turkey has some 12-14 million Kurds out of a total population of 70 million, but public use of the Kurdish language is still banned in certain situations, including during political speeches or in official correspondence. In reforms aimed at obtaining membership in the EU, Ankara has expanded the cultural and political rights of its Kurdish population, including launching a state-run Kurdish television station, TRT 6, in January 2008.
The public use of Kurdish was prohibited following the 1980 military coup until 1991. The dedication of one of Turkish Radio and Television’s (TRT) channels to broadcasting in Kurdish was welcomed as a late, but pleasing, move that could strengthen the unity between the Turks and the Kurds.
“We didn’t want to exclude Kurdish as we prepare translations of the Quran into other languages. Kurdish is widely spoken in Turkey,” Mehmet Görmez, deputy head of the Religious Affairs Directorate told the Anatolia news agency yesterday.
A committee of experts has begun to compare several Kurdish translations of the Quran, said Görmez, noting that the committee was researching how to improve the Quran’s Kurdish translation into one edition that could easily be understood by Kurdish readers. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is courting the support of Kurds ahead of the March 29 local elections and an official translation of the Quran into Kurdish is likely to be well received.
Previous governments viewed the Kurdish language as part of separatist propaganda. The state has fought a decades-long war with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) terrorists in the Southeast, in which 40,000 people have been killed.
Görmez also noted the Religious Affairs Directorate has launched a long-term project to translate the Quran into all the languages and dialects spoken around the world.
“We printed translations of the Quran in the Azeri and Tatar languages, and research is under way to print translations in the Georgian and Belarusian languages,” added Görmez.
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