Effects of Internal Displacement on the Usage of the Kurdish Language in Turkey

This paper draws on expert interviews to shed light on how the internal displacement of Kurds living in Turkey shapes the usage and persistence of the Kurdish language

Published on October 31, 2022

Selen Vargün Alıtkan | hidn, IDPs, Internal migration, Ethnicity, Humanities, Middle East, MENA Region

Turkey. Dawn in Digor, a district where many Kurdish people live. 2014 © Birkan Çelik

The Kurdish language, which belongs to a nation without having a country of its own, is affected by internal displacement in the Turkish context. Through interviews, this paper aims to gather the voices of the experts in the field who are working with internally displaced Kurds or working to keep Kurdish alive by producing and protecting Kurdish literature. These voices shed a narrow but devoted light on the relationship between the internal displacement of the Kurds living in Turkey with the Kurdish language and the effects of internal displacement on the usage and persistence of the language. This relationship gives some insights into the future of Kurdish and whether it is at risk of extinction or not. The results of the interviews indicate that some risks remain and these should be discussed and analyzed since there is not a sufficient amount of research on this particular topic in academia.

Selen Vargün Alıtkan, graduated from Marmara University Law Faculty in 2005 and worked both as a freelance lawyer and legal consultant in I/NGOs in order to provide legal consultancy to refugees, attend as a defender for juridical cases, and establish networking with local authorities to facilitate referral mechanisms in Turkey. She is currently pursuing MA in international migration and ethnic relations at Malmö University.

This paper was written by the author for the 2022 Summer School on Internal Displacement in the Middle East – “Crisis, Displacement and Protection” – run by the Middle East Research Network on Internal Displacement, the Lebanese American University Institute for Migration Studies, and the Internal Displacement Research Programme at the Refugee Law Initiative.

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