From behind the walls of his prison, here is the Twit­ter mag­a­zine Sela­hat­tin put on the boil. Don’t ask us to show you the kettle.

1- All of the Earth­’s lan­guages are beau­ti­ful and pre­cious; it is very impor­tant to ful­ly adopt our own, and fur­ther the pro­gres­sion of for­bid­den lan­guages at risk of dis­ap­pear­ing. Kur­dish is one of those languages.


2- For this rea­son, I find the Kur­dish Lan­guage Work­shop in Diyarbakır pre­cious and impor­tant. I am con­vinced every­one should take active mea­sures so that the results flow­ing from this work­shop be seri­ous­ly fol­lowed and put into practice.

3- Dur­ing the state of emer­gency, sev­er­al media, tele­vi­sion sta­tions, radios, news­pa­pers, mag­a­zines, web­sites, kinder­gartens, schools and insti­tutes work­ing with and in Kur­dish were shut down. Nev­er mind the fact that Kur­dish could become a lan­guage in which to study, an offi­cial lan­guage and one used social­ly, repres­sion is piti­less for the sim­ple act of approach­ing it and of peo­ple pro­tect­ing their moth­er tongue with their lim­it­ed means.

4- The hurt­ful, unimag­in­able and crazy pro­hi­bi­tions on lan­guages must be lift­ed. We are under­go­ing a peri­od in which every­one should ful­ly prac­tice his or her mater­nal language.

5- The fact that the dom­i­nant lan­guages encir­cle our dai­ly lives through their means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, com­put­ers and tech­nol­o­gy means that, in Turkey, where the Kur­dish lan­guage is dis­crim­i­nat­ed against, it is los­ing ground. This fact must be reit­er­at­ed publicly.

6- The deng­bêj (Kur­dish bards) have played a very impor­tant role in the pro­tec­tion and trans­mis­sion of Kur­dish. Our dear Ömer Günes and Ibrahim Sahin led to the meet­ing of two of the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of this his­tor­i­cal tra­di­tion, Reşo and Şakiro (no, not Shaki­ra!) in a mag­nif­i­cent work. Thanks to you both.

7- Despite all the pro­hi­bi­tions and hur­dles, a music mag­a­zine by the name of Ziryab has start­ed pub­li­ca­tion. I haven’t seen it yet, but it’s a fine ini­tia­tive. Con­grat­u­la­tions and my best wishes.

8- There is also Dilop, a magazine on art, culture and literature. I follow it and recommend it.

9- You don’t need to be Eng­lish to learn Eng­lish, nor do you need to be a Turk to learn Turk­ish. You don’t need to be Kur­dish to learn the lan­guage either. For any lan­guage, all you need is to be human.

10- I don’t rec­om­mend learn­ing Kur­dish only to Kurds who don’t know their moth­er tongue. We live togeth­er and will con­tin­ue to live togeth­er. So let’s respect each oth­er’s lan­guage, and learn it.This won’t keep us from being togeth­er, on the con­trary, it will make us more beau­ti­ful and stronger.

11- Let’s have a brief musi­cal break. A mag­nif­i­cent performance.

 

12- Mean­while, I remind you of the books writ­ten by my bud­dies, who keep on writ­ing and cre­at­ing in jail. If you haven’t read them yet…

13–  You can send me infor­ma­tion on ini­tia­tives that you find impor­tant, such as con­fer­ences, round tables, so that I can relay. But, we do not relay wed­dings, and cir­cum­ci­sion celebrations 🙂

13- Vous pou­vez me trans­met­tre les infor­ma­tions sur les ini­tia­tives que vous trou­vez impor­tantes, comme des con­férences, tables ron­des, pour que je puisse relay­er. Mais, nous ne relayons pas les mariages, fiançailles, et fêtes de circoncision 🙂 

14- This week our main top­ic was mater­nal languages.Let’s close off today by lis­ten­ing to a deng­bêj. I await your sug­ges­tions for next week. Hap­py Mawlid.
From the cold walls of the prison, we send you our warmest greetings…

Addi­tion: We have just learned that “For the Euro­pean Human Rights Tri­bunal, the jail­ing of the Kur­dish leader and Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date “sti­fles plu­ral­ism”.  It has “ordered” to free him. What means does the Court have to exert pres­sure in this direc­tion? This excel­lent news rais­es many ques­tions since the recent sum­mits of the four­somes. A sto­ry to be continued.

A peti­tion has been launched in response to the Turk­ish Pres­i­den­t’s refusal to con­form to the Court’s deci­sion, as he should by virtue of the inter­na­tion­al com­mit­ments to which he is a signatory.


Turquie • Un lun­di avec Sela­hat­tin sur Twit­ter… Cliquez pour lire

Translation by Renée Lucie Bourges
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Le petit mag­a­zine qui ne se laisse pas caress­er dans le sens du poil.