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The café-book­store in Sulay­maniye­h’s Sal­im cin­e­ma is a refuge for intel­lec­tu­als and young pro­gres­sives who go there to work qui­et­ly, read and flirt.

Sit­ting at a table, a flow­ery red scarf around her neck and with atten­tive eyes, Nas­ka smiles recall­ing her birth in the 80s in the Qandil moun­tains, in the midst of the PDKI’s Kur­dish gueril­la in which her par­ents, pesh­mer­gas, fought against the Iran­ian State for the Kur­dish peo­ple’s right to atuon­o­my. When it became dif­fi­cult for them to care for their three chil­dren, at the age of 5, she was sent into Iran’s Kur­dish regions (Rojhe­lat) with her grand­moth­er. There then fol­lowed trips back and forth on both sides of the bor­der which exac­er­bat­ed her per­cep­tion of the fron­tier. Final­ly, at age 18, she went to study at Erbil’s Sala­haddin Uni­ver­si­ty, in the autonomous region of Kur­dis­tan, in the North of Irak (known as Bashur). There, she obained a licence in com­put­er engi­neer­ing. Now state­less, she is Kur­dish but with no State nation­al­i­ty. With her part­ner Barzan, she devel­oped the Pir­tukân appli­ca­tion meant to ren­der avail­able for all a huge library of dig­i­tal books in Kur­dish, pub­lished in all parts of Kur­dis­tan and across the diaspora.

Tall and slim, with a gen­tle smile on his face, Barzan was born in a poor fam­i­ly of the Kur­dish regions in Iran. He arrived in Erbil in order to work and fail­ing to be accept­ed in Polit­i­cal Sci­ences, he obtained a Mas­ter in Busi­ness Admin­is­tra­tion. Although his main area of exper­tise rests in eco­nom­ics, he became self-taught in com­put­er devel­op­ment, along with a num­ber of oth­er areas. He then got the idea for the Pir­tukân application.

The two devel­op­ers are lit­er­a­ture lovers. They real­ize how Kur­dish lit­er­a­ture is divid­ed in pieces by the bor­ders of Nation-States that impinge on Kur­dish regions, lim­it­ing the cir­cu­la­tion of works as well as that of peo­ple, and iso­lat­ing writ­ten pro­duc­tion with­in the bor­ders in which it was con­ceived To this must be added, notably in Turkey and in Iran, the pro­hi­bi­tions by gov­ern­men­tal author­i­ties against hun­dreds of books con­sid­ered too sub­ver­sive. For exam­ple, the pub­lish­ing house Aram in Turkey has more than 400 books that are pro­hib­it­ed. For the most part, impris­oned authors can­not pub­lish their works, which would be pos­si­ble dig­i­tal­ly via the appli­ca­tion. And final­ly, trans­porta­tion of paper copies is com­pli­cat­ed from one part of Kur­dis­tan to anoth­er, as well as to Europe. The abun­dant lit­er­a­ture of Bashur in par­tic­u­lar has trou­ble reach­ing Europe.

The project, cur­rent­ly con­duct­ed with no out­side financ­ing, has been met enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly by edi­tors in all parts of Kur­dis­tan who have accept­ed to make their books avail­able. Access will be free for some, and against pay­ment for oth­ers, which raised one of the dif­fi­cul­ties in con­ceiv­ing the app: pay­ment meth­ods are not the same in the dif­fer­ent parts of Kur­dis­tan and are depen­dent on the poli­cies of the respec­tive Nation-States. In Iran, it is impos­si­ble to direct bank pay­ment to the out­side world because of the embar­go, cryp­tocur­ren­cy must thus be used. In Turkey, Pay­pal is pro­hib­it­ed… Anoth­er tech­ni­cal dffi­cul­ty involved data secu­ri­ty, both for the edi­tors so that the books would not be pirat­ed or mod­i­fied, in order to guar­an­tee exact­ness, but also to pro­tect user data. More­over, the old­er books do not always exist in dig­i­tal for­mat. When this is the case, there is some­times need to re-work the files pro­vid­ed by the edi­tors in order to for­mat them cor­rect­ly, a long and often fas­tid­i­ous task. “The edi­tors from Roja­va pro­vid­ed us with the best files,” Nas­ka says with a smile.

In her view, the appli­ca­tion has a wider pur­pose than pro­vid­ing access to the works. “The ques­tion of resist­ing against bor­ders and Nation-states is the basis of our idea,“Nas­ka says. Since the works being made acces­si­ble through Pir­tukân will be con­sid­ered depend­able sources, she hopes lin­guis­tic research on the Kur­dish lan­guage and text analy­ses will be facil­i­tat­ed, as will the cir­cu­la­tion of ideas and lit­er­ary texts As one exam­ple, she men­tions the pos­si­bil­i­ty of dis­pos­ing of a mul­ti­lin­gual Kur­dish dic­tio­nary as a ref­er­ence source.

The two devel­op­ers have also thought about the mat­ter of acces­si­bil­i­ty: in a small stu­dio set up in an office pro­vid­ed by one of their sup­port­ers, they will begin record­ing audio books, both for per­sons with a visu­al hand­i­cap but also for those who can­not read in Kur­dish but under­stand the spo­ken lan­guage. Nas­ka also insists on the space of chil­dren’s books and their trans­la­tion. Not only into the major­i­ty Kur­dish lan­guages such as kur­mancî or soranî but also into endan­gered lan­guages such as zaza­kî, hewramî. They have been in con­tact with the chil­dren’s chan­nel Zarok TV in North­ern Kur­dis­tan (Bakur), where a sim­i­lar reflec­tion is ongo­ing con­cern­ing tv pro­grams for youth.

Mov­ing into the tech­no­log­i­cal field is an impor­tant issue for the Kur­dish move­ment. “All move­ments can use tech­nol­o­gy to sup­port their cause,” Nas­ka says, “I con­sid­er we must use it to counter that of our oppo­nents. Poten­tial exists in Kur­dis­tan, but it is under-develped. The quan­ti­ty of knowl­edge now avail­able eas­i­ly and freely has also been under­es­ti­mat­ed. Per­haps the Kur­dish move­ment has paid less atten­tion to the tech­no­log­i­cal sec­tor because it is asso­ci­at­ed with cap­i­tal­ism. Peo­ple in social sci­ences some­times have less of a vision on the impor­tance of tech­nol­o­gy and of how it can help them. But that is changing…For exam­ple, the PKK has begun devel­op­ing its own drone sys­tems”. Pri­or to con­tact­ing the edi­tors, the two devel­op­ers were in touch with the KCK, a struc­ture group­ing all for­ma­tions uphold­ing demo­c­ra­t­ic con­fed­er­al­ism, offer­ing to dig­i­tal­ize its works.

The appli­ca­tion’s devel­op­ment is now com­plet­ed. Nas­ka and Barzan are cur­rent­ly work­ing on for­mat­ting works in order to have a suf­fi­cient offer on hand at the launch­ing of the appli­ca­tion in approx­i­mate­ly two months.

Here’s hop­ing to invite actors in Kur­dish lit­er­a­ture from all four cor­ners of Kur­dis­tan to mark the event.

Loez


Translation by Renée Lucie Bourges
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Loez
Pho­to-jour­nal­iste indépendant
Loez s’in­téresse depuis plusieurs années aux con­séquences des États-nations sur le peu­ple kurde, et aux luttes de celui-ci.