Kyle Marquardt: Language is key to a culture (2)

In the first half of the interview, published yesterday, we spoke with Marquardt about governmental efforts in places such as Turkey and Turkmenistan to direct the course of a language’s development. Marquardt described how the relationship between language and culture is often critical, even spurring the public in some countries to modify their own language patterns in attempts to maintain or gain a hold over their culture and identity. The issue is complex and a group’s decision to modify their use of language in a specific way can be tied to their religious beliefs, but, as Marquardt emphasizes, speakers of Turkic regions are incredibly diverse in their views, religious and otherwise.

In the same way that religion is hard to discuss because of the plural nature of these countries, Marquardt says there are many different generations to consider when looking at these nations collectively, due to their different demographic and political realties. ‘’In Kazakhstan for example, people are starting to realize that the Kazakh language is something at least their children will have to learn. It’s sort of the language of the future; that’s the general impression there. In my experience, in the large cities like Almaty and Astana it’s very much a Russian-preferential area, but it’s become very clear in the political direction of the country that the Kazakh language is becoming the language of the country. ... In all these countries you do see among the youth more use of the language, but again this is sort of a tricky thing to say. All of these countries [are diverse]; for example in Azerbaijan there’s not just Azeri, you also have minority populations ranging from Russians to a significant Jewish population. And there are also people who speak Persian languages. And so all these groups have very different sociolinguistic trends.’’

Something that has always interested Marquardt was whether or not there is a sense of unity among the Turkic states in the post-Soviet era. One of the questions he often posed to people was how they felt about their language and about Turkish. As might be expected, the replies his received were widely varied, even among people in the same countries. “Azerbaijan sees them as very much the same … A person will say, ‘I can speak Turkish to any person that I want to and it’s great, we’re all brothers and sisters’. You also meet people [who are] very stern about their language being its own language and talking about how Turkish speakers coming to Azerbaijan should speak Azeri because they’re in Azerbaijan. In Turkmenistan you have some claiming they’re very close and other people saying not at all. I got criticized for trying to pass off my Turkish as Turkmen. … And then in Kazakhstan there is definitely a belief in common cultural backgrounds, common origins; but it’s also definitely seen as ‘Kazakh is our identity now’.”

A great deal of Marquardts’ research has focused on Tatarstan, providing the opportunity to study language, politics and power in a non-sovereign state. “The official title is the autonomous Republic of Tatarstan. What exactly that means depends on who you ask, when you ask and who you are when you’re asking,” he says. “They just signed a new agreement about what exactly it means to be a republic. There is wide variety of people in Tatarstan and in Russia, ranging from people who believe that it should just be another part of Russia to people who are nationalists and who say that Tatarstan should be a separate state. And it has sort of veered wildly, well since the fall of the Soviet Union, between being very autonomous and now it’s increasingly, in my impression, becoming integrated with Russia. And it is becoming clearer that Tatarstan is a part of Russia and will stay a part of the Russian Federation.”

Marquardt contrasts the reality of Tatarstan with that of the sovereign Azerbaijan, saying that there’s a third variable present in the linguistic situation of Tatarstan that is not a factor in Azerbaijan: “In Azerbaijan, it’s ‘What does the government of Azerbaijan want to do and what do the people of Azerbaijan want to do?’ And obviously they are influenced by Russia, by the US, by Turkey and by Iran. But generally, if the government of Azerbaijan wants to do something, they are able to do it as long as the people are in agreement. Whereas in Tatarstan you have not only the people of the republic, but also the republic’s government and then you have the government of the Russian Federation. And so these three different groups are pursuing policies that sometimes coincide and sometimes diverge.”

When asked about how the populations as a whole view the attempts to reclaim the direction of their titular languages, Marquardt says: “The other issue is that the people of the republic are not of one unanimous mindset. There are people who don’t see any reason to learn Tatar and there are those who see every reason to learn Tatar. … So you have people who feel that everyone in Tatarstan should speak Tatar because they are in Tatarstan and you have people who say that there’s no reason to learn Tatar because they’re in the Russian Federation. And obviously most people come in somewhere between; it’s a bilingual republic but you shouldn’t force someone to do too much in one direction. And so it’s sort of an ambiguous area right now.”

Marquardt also called attention to the fact that there were many ethnic and linguistic minorities in a lot of these Turkic areas: “Kazakhstan has many ethnicities with their own languages that want to see some sort of protection for that. In Azerbaijan, same thing; and in Turkmenistan as well.” He also says that there are varying degrees of governmental protection of minority languages, in addition to the countries’ titular tongues, and says of the Turkic governments that, “In general they are aware of the minorities in their countries and are not actively attempting to assimilate them.”