Washington Kurdish Institute
By: Matthiew Margala August 8,2020
“I know many Kurdish artists. They had to hide their identity as Kurds. And many people wouldn’t even mention their real city. They’d say “I’m from Istanbul”, or they’d lose the possibility to do shows in big cities like Izmir. Many adapted to the government. People would change their subjects to be closer to Turkish culture. Many people in Diyarbakir struggle to have shows because of politics and also because we don’t have support for the Kurdish art community.” These are the words of Lukman Ahmed, a prominent Kurdish artist, originally based in South-Eastern Turkey, and now working for Voice of America in Washington D.C. Ahmed spent much of his artistic career in his native of Rojava, the Kurdish region in Syria, as well as the Kurdish region in Iraq and Turkey. Like many other Kurdish artists, Ahmed uses his art to express his identity as a Kurd, as others, such as the famed singer Ahmet Kaya, sought to do as well. However, his words show how difficult this is for a Kurdish artist inside Turkey, both due to direct state opposition, and the prevailing view within Turkish society that Kurdish expression, dissent, and freedom is a path to the division of the Turkish state, which its founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, sought so desperately to avoid after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.
With the current leadership of President Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP), Turkey has shifted towards a Neo-Ottoman and Islamist identity, not only seeking to crush its perceived enemies within its own borders, but also seeking to revise borders and regain influence in former Ottoman territories. Part of this transformation of the Turkish state is strictly controlling cultural expression and art, and thereby stifling freedom of speech. Despite initially relaxing restrictions, ever since the renewed conflict with the Kurdistan WorkerS’ Party (PKK) began again in 2015, repression has come back in a harsh way. In majority-Kurdish areas, the AKP has fired or arrested over 80 mayors that were democratically elected and replaced them with appointees loyal to the ruling party. Furthermore, over 80 percent of municipal staff in these areas that promoted the teaching of the Kurdish language, along with other minority languages, have been fired. Statues of prominent Kurdish heroic figures have been removed, streets renamed, and some artists jailed for paintings perceived as opposing the view of the government.
Kurds have faced extensive cultural repression throughout their history. Up until 1991, the official government policy was to deny the existence of Kurds, referring to them as “Mountain Turks”. Kurdish language use in public life was banned for many years, and today continues to be censored, with Kurdish language courses being forbidden from being taught. The only Kurdish-language newspaper in Turkey, Azadiya Welat, was closed in 2016. Even Zarok TV, a Kurdish channel that played cartoons for children, was briefly shut down before being re-open.
The government of Turkey has always used the same excuse as motivation for all of these actions, against Kurdish television channels, artists, journalists, etc. That reasoning is that all of them were either directly working for or sympathizing with the PKK. Erdogan’s government constantly reminds the world that his state has no problem with Kurds, but only with terrorists. However, it is difficult to perceive how a children’s cartoon show could, 80% of municipal language teachers, as well as artists expressing their identity can be connected to terrorism. Lukman Ahmed said “ A few times in Istanbul people would say “this is more politics than art”. I said that politics is part of our life and you have to be a witness to that. All of it is covered by the Turkish government’s political umbrella”. It appears that this umbrella seeks to cover all of society within the borders of the Republic of Turkey, from journalism, to education, and to art, in order to more fully dominate public life.
With the government so opposed to Kurdish expressions of culture, it is difficult for Kurdish artists such as Ahmed to find legal protection for their art as well. Neither the state nor many prominent members of the Turkish artistic community (who could potentially be sponsors for artists) are willing to speak out and defend Kurdish art. Ahmed himself has recently faced a brazen attempt at plagiarism by another Turkish artist by the name of “Mehmet Yucel”. It is clear based on the image that several paintings have been copied to a large extent. However, when faced with such hostility from the Turkish art community, and a government that is more interested in keeping non-Turkish identities weak as opposed to promoting the cultural diversity found within its borders, how is an artist, even one as prominent as Ahmed, to secure and protect the rights to his own work?
The Turkish government does not only consider the militant resistance of the PKK as being a “terrorist” threat to Turkey. It is also the efforts by Kurds to develop their own, independent civil society organizations, from the Kurdish Institute of Istanbul, to the Azadiya Welat news channel, and even to the HDP political party, that represents Kurdish and minority interests in Turkey’s Grand National Assembly. When a country develops its identity around an authoritarian ethno-nationalism, such as Turkey, or Assad’s Syrian Arab Republic, Or Saddam Hussein’s Ba’athist Iraq, it cannot allow challenges to this status quo.The idea of Assad’s Syria is a united, Arabic country that emphasizes this Arab identity. If the existence of a separate, non-Arab ethnic and cultural identity is admitted to exist by a regime that stakes its entire identity and existence on Arab nationalism, and if this group is allowed to develop its own cultural and political civil society organizations, it will inherently become less dependent on the regime.
The same can be said for Turkey, where Mustafa Kemal Ataturk moved towards Turkish nationalism, away from the Islamism of the Ottoman Empire. The integrity of the Turkish state was emphasized as essential, and this has only been expanded upon by President Erdogan and his Neo-Ottoman ambitions within the region. It is this mindset that has led to any discussions or attempts at autonomy and/or independence by the Kurdish minority to be harshly cracked down upon. At the end of 2016, on December 31st, 94 associations, including the Kurdish Institute of Istanbul, were shut down due to allegations regarding “connections to a terrorist organization”.
Nevertheless, in some regards, there is still reason to be optimistic. In many ways, the situation for Kurds in Turkey is still not nearly as drastic as it once was. According to Abdullah Keskin, who is the leader of Avesta, Turkey’s largest Kurdish-language publisher, his company published more Kurdish-language books in 2016 than the entire Kurdish community in Turkey was able to publish in the first 60 years following the establishment of the Turkish Republic. Recent actions though, are “a kind of coup against Kurdish language and culture” according to him.
Overall, culture has been used by different ethnic and religious minorities around the world to express themselves and protest at their conditions since time immemorial. The Kurds within Turkey, and also those that find themselves within the borders of Syria, Iraq, and Iran, are no different. Individuals such as Lukman Ahmed and Abdullah Keskin have used art to show their respective governments, as well as the world, that their identity is real and that their people do exist. Art and culture are crucial in terms of their use as forms of protest, the ability of art and culture to keep an identity alive through language, stories, etc, and also in terms of the ability of art and culture to create an autonomous civil society for its respective ethnic or religious identity. The institutes, schools, television networks, eventually help to further expand and promote an identity, to a point where authoritarian regimes will brazenly censor, shut down, and arrest those involved with such activities. It is essential that the Kurds of all four parts of Kurdistan, but especially Turkey, continue to express themselves as Kurdish people in the arts and culture, in order to keep their language, culture, stories, etc alive and able to resist the repression of those who would keep them censored.
Matthiew Margala is a reach assistant at the Washington Kurdish Institute.