page_title: Racism in Turkey
section_title: Against Kurds
hierarchical_section_title: Racism in Turkey / Against Kurds
caption_attribution_description: English: Headline of the daily Cumhuriyet dated July 13, 1930: Cleaning started, those at Zeylân valley were completely annihilated, None of them survived, operation at Ağrı are continuing. Ankara 12 (With telephone) ... According to latest information, the cleaning in districts of Erciş, Mount Süphan and Zeylân was completely finished ...
context_page_description: In Turkey, racism and ethnic discrimination are present in its society and throughout its history, including institutional racism against non-Muslim and non-Sunni minorities. This appears mainly in the form of negative attitudes and actions by Turks towards people who are not considered ethnically Turkish. Such discrimination is predominantly towards non-Turkish ethnic minorities such as Kurds, Zazas, Armenians, Assyrians, Greeks, and Jews, as well as hostility towards minority forms of Islam such as Alevis, Sufis, and Shias.
  In recent years, racism in Turkey has shifted towards Syrian refugees and Arabs in general.
context_section_description: Kurds have had a long history of discrimination and massacres perpetrated against them by the Turkish government. One of the most significant is the incident in Dersim where according to an official report of the Fourth General Inspectorate, 13,160 civilians were killed by the Turkish Army and 11,818 people were taken into exile, depopulating the province in 1937–38. According to the Dersimi, many tribesmen were shot dead after surrendering, and women and children were locked into haysheds which were then set on fire. According to McDowall, 40,000 people were killed. According to Kurdish Diaspora sources, over 70,000 people were killed.
  The Zilan massacre of 1930, was a massacre of the Kurdish residents of Turkey during the Ararat rebellion, in which 800–1500 armed men participated. According to the daily Cumhuriyet dated July 16, 1930, about 15,000 people were killed and Zilan River was filled with dead bodies as far as its mouth. On August 31, 1930, the daily Milliyet published the declaration of the Turkish prime minister İsmet İnönü: "Only the Turkish nation has the right to demand ethnic and racial rights in this country. Any other element does not have such a right. They are Eastern Turkish who were deceived by unfounded propaganda and eventually lost their way."
  In an attempt to deny their existence, the Turkish government categorized Kurds as "Mountain Turks" until 1991. Since then, the Kurdish population of Turkey has long sought to have Kurdish included as a language of instruction in public schools as well as a subject. Several attempts at opening Kurdish instruction centers were stopped on technical grounds, such as wrong dimensions of doors. Turkish sources claimed that running Kurdish-language schools was wound up in 2004 because of 'an apparent lack of interest'. Even though Kurdish language schools have started to operate, many of them have been forced to shut down due to over-regulation by the state. Kurdish language institutes have been monitored under strict surveillance and bureaucratic pressure. Using Kurdish language as main education language is illegal in Turkey. It is accepted only as subject courses.
  Kurdish is permitted as a subject in universities, some of those are only language courses while others are graduate or post-graduate Kurdish literature and language programs.
  Due to the large number of Turkish Kurds, successive governments have viewed the expression of a Kurdish identity as a potential threat to Turkish unity, a feeling that has been compounded since the armed rebellion initiated by the PKK in 1984. One of the main accusations of cultural assimilation relates to the state's historic suppression of the Kurdish language. Kurdish publications created throughout the 1960s and 1970s were shut down under various legal pretexts. Following the military coup of 1980, the Kurdish language was officially prohibited in government institutions.
  In April 2000, US Congressman Bob Filner spoke of a "cultural genocide", stressing that "a way of life known as Kurdish is disappearing at an alarming rate". Mark Levene suggests that the genocidal practices were not limited to cultural genocide, and that the events of the late 19th century continued until 1990. In 2019, Deutsche Welle reported that Kurds had been increasingly subject to violent hate crimes.
  Certain academics have claimed that successive Turkish governments adopted a sustained genocide program against Kurds, aimed at their assimilation. The genocide hypothesis remains, however, a minority view among historians, and is not endorsed by any nation or major organisation. Desmond Fernandes, a senior lecturer at De Montfort University, breaks the policy of the Turkish authorities into the following categories:
  Forced assimilation program, which involved, among other things, a ban of the Kurdish language, and the forced relocation of Kurds to non-Kurdish areas of Turkey.
  The banning of any organizations opposed to category one.
  The violent repression of any Kurdish resistance.
  In January 2013, the Turkish parliament passed a law that permits us
caption: Headline of the daily Cumhuriyet dated July 13, 1930: Cleaning started, the ones at Zeylân valley were completely annihilated, None of them survived, operation at Ağrı is continuing. Ankara 12 (With telephone) ... According to latest information, the cleaning in districts of Erciş, Mount Süphan and Zeylân has completely finished ...
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