[vidarh]

> The Turkish alphabet might be interpreted by some as a form of oppression, but it's adoption was more about breaking with the past and embracing democracy and the west.

Maybe that was the primary motivation, but Turkey has also been unusually brutal about trying to force minorities to embrace Turkish culture.

As I've mentioned elsewhere, I used to know a Turkish journalist that was forced to flee after repeated death threats from the regime because he wrote about the problems the Kurds ran into. These problems ran from not being allowed to even call themselves Kurds for a long time - the regime insisted no such thing as Kurds existed. They were not allowed (and still isn't other than in private schools) to learn their own language in school. Along with a huge range of other restrictions.

That makes it hard to ignore the effect of the alphabet restrictions as yet another part of the cultural oppression.

[ufukbay]

I don't quite understand why minorities have to have everything in their native language if they chose to live in a foreign country.

I'm a German-born Turk who lives in Germany (Berlin) and I don't have a problem that I had to learn German at school. For me, it's self-explanatory that I have to learn German sooner or later if I plan to live in Germany. It's the same case for everyone who prefers to work and live in a foreign country.

[vidarh]

Firstly, they are not immigrants. Turkey is home to a substantial Kurdish minority that predates the establishment of the Turkish state.

Secondly, this is not about having all things in their native language, but about the fact that in many situations using Kurdish will land you in prison, even when speaking to other people whose primary language is Kurdish.

Until recently, a political party that dared distribute material in Kurdish risked being banned from elections, and people involved risk going to prison.

And a 2010 report I linked to elsewhere points out that Turkish officials that dare to use Kurdish in official communication - even if in a Kurdish area, communicating with Kurds - risked prison just a few years ago.

None of that is the case in Germany. In fact, specifically to the Kurds, you will find quite a few Turkish Kurds in Germany who enjoy a lot more freedom to use and learn their language in ways that would at least until recently have put them at risk of prison in their ancestral homes in Turkey.

Further to your school example, it is well established that being given the opportunity to learn your primary home language well is critical to learning another language at school. As such, forcing kids that speak Kurdish at home to learn only Turkish at school places them at a severe disadvantage. If the goal is to give these kids a the best possible chance of getting good at Turkish, the best way of achieving that is to offer them training in Kurdish too.

[dmxmaybe]

Yes, but the Kurds in Turkey aren't immigrants. Their families didn't choose to be minorities in an oppressive state, Turkey decided to take their land. They didn't land on plymouth rock, plymouth rock landed on them.

[ern]

I don't quite understand why minorities have to have everything in their native language if they chose to live in a foreign country.

I guess it comes down to how the minority group ended up where it is, and how one would define a "foreign country". If a group of people migrate voluntarily, the receiving country would have a legitimate expectation that they'd learn the language, and adopt at least some aspects of the dominant culture.

If a group is conquered (or enslaved), or through some accident of history ends up a minority, I personally don't believe they should be coerced into adopting the ways of the majority. It would be compounding an injustice.

I'm not sure where the Kurds fit in to this - did they really "choose" to live in modern Turkey, the way that Turks who migrated to Germany did?

[mogrim]

It's not a foreign country, though - they're not immigrants.