COPENHAGEN, Denmark – The first Turkish-Kurdish dictionary went on sale in Turkey, a milestone of sorts in a country where the Kurdish language was banned until 1991 and where the country’s large minority Kurds still widely complain of persecution.

The dictionary, which translates from both Turkish and Kurdish, was published by the state-run Turkish Language Association (TDK), the official regulator of the Turkish language, and has attracted much media and public attention.

The dictionary is based on the Kurmanji dialect spoken by most Kurds in Turkey, and is prepared by language experts and academics for use at schools where Kurdish is an elective course.

TDK Chairman Mustafa Kacalin said the dictionary was the result of 18 months of work.

Fifty-thousand copies have been printed of the first edition, which is split into Turkish-Kurdish and Kurdish-Turkish sections.

Speaking Kurdish and any expression of Kurdish culture was completely banned in Turkey until 1991. The ban was imposed by the founder of modern Turkey, Kemal Ataturk, who propagated the idea of “one people, one language, one state, one flag.”

By publishing a Kurdish dictionary TDK, which was established with Ataturk’s own initiative, has drawn much attention in the Turkish media.

Duygu Atlas, a researcher and expert on Turkey at Tel Aviv University, told Rudaw that publication of the dictionary, like so many other steps in recent years, overturns Turkey’s past politics.

“After the First World War, the new political elite took up the nation-building project with Turkish nationalism as its basis, in order to create a homogeneous nation. But now we slowly see a change,” she said.

An example of the change was witnessed on May 24, when during a visit to Germany Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared the motto of “one people, one state, one flag,” but did not mention “one language.”

However, a board member of the Human Rights Association (IHD) in Istanbul, Seza Mis Horoz, told Rudaw that the Kurds still face discrimination over speaking Kurdish.

"The taboo against the Kurdish language is broken and the community can speak Kurdish. But because Kurdish still has no legal status in the Turkish constitution, the Kurds still suffer difficulties. For example, prisoners are not always allowed to defend themselves in Kurdish in court," Horoz said.

Language rights are a central Kurdish demand, and Atlas does not believe Kurds will settle for less than full rights.

”There may be more small-scale reforms in store, but anything that falls short of full language rights, especially education in their mother tongue, in the end will categorically mean the continuation of the ‘Kurdish question’ in Turkey,” Atlas said.

Rudaw