Sth. in english

“We have no bread baking in the oven”
[Article published in the book supplement of the daily Radikal on 12.12.2003.]

The final days of the bayram (festive) holidays, the flight from Istanbul to Diyarbakır. Some of the passengers are bilingual, and the announcements are made in two languages. None, however, are in the mother tongue of the
majority of the people on the plane.

Adjoining me are seated dark eyed women wearing white headscarves with the
deepest possible lines etched on their faces. They aren’t speaking, but their appearance is more than familiar. They are the ones whose suffering defies any measure. We have been seeing them, in increasing numbers, in the mass protests of the last ten to fifteen years. In their most dire moments, they may resort to the zılgıt (their traditional cry), but otherwise they have since long been at a loss for words. They have never attacked anyone. The banned language is theirs.

We are on our way to the meeting of the Diyarbakır branch of Eğitim-Sen (Education Workers’ Union); the topic is education in the mother tongue. The plan is to present the morning session in Turkish, and the afternoon session in Kurdish. We, together with the other speakers, are gently alerted to the likelihood of an official intervention into this second session; the possibility, although not strong, does exist. It is to be the first time such a meeting is held. After all, the topic on the agenda is one that led to the arrest of the person who submitted applications demanding education in their mother tongue, and to some students being dismissed from their schools for the same reason. What’s more, the meeting is held not on the day the permission was taken for, but the next, because flights were cancelled due to fog and speakers did not arrive on time. This could also be a reason for intervention. For this type of meeting to
be held in Diyarbakır, the residency papers, birth certificate copies etc. of speakers must be submitted days in advance for permission to be obtained. I mean, if sought, pretexts abound.

But no, they do not intervene. There are teachers here too, like at the
symposium Eğitim-Sen organized in June 2003 in Ankara. But this time we also see in the hall representatives of the native language, those with their white headscarves, the mothers and the fathers. I turn and look at Feyza Hepçilingirler as she speaks, sensing her heart is on the verge of breaking, and observe, glistening in the corner of her eye, the path drawn by a teardrop.

The speeches can be summarized in a single sentence: In education the mother tongues of all children must be taken into account and all mother tongues must be shown equal love and respect.

Following the presentations, a few oral, and many written questions are put to the speakers. One of them is to Hepçilingirler and me: Is there any work being done in universities regarding Kurdish?

Hepçilingirler responds by saying there is no such work being done as far as she is aware. I have nothing that I can add to this. Or rather, I have already said in my presentation speech: Since an environment of academic freedom where Kurdish and other mother tongues can be studied fearlessly does not exist, it is not possible for any work to be done. Yet there are so many questions, and so many problems in this field, in need of being studied, waiting for the academics.

Receiving the plaque presented by Eğitim-Sen, I mention İsmail Beşikçi, that honourable scientist who created his own freedom of thought, and in return spent the most part of his life behind bars. My words are met with vigorous applause. Hepçilingirler and I receive our plaques from the two women with white headscarves invited to the stage.

Bağlar is a neighbourhood of Diyarbakır located close to the airport, where until a few years ago, “perpetrator unknown” murders intensified. At the airport, where we have to wait for a long time because we are on the waiting list for the return flight, there is no place to eat. We go out and eat at a restaurant nearby. At dusk, as we make our way back to the airport by walking along a deserted street that extends endlessly along a concrete wall and a wire fence, a seven or eight year old student appears and begins to walk with us. Responding to none of the successive questions posed in both Kurdish and Turkish by Şefik Beyaz, the President of the Kurdish Institute of Istanbul, the child keeps walking with his head down. Just when we are about to give up hope, he says, in Turkish, “we have no bread baking in the oven”. It takes us quite a while to understand that
this means, “We do not have the money to buy bread.”

It is the morning of December 4, 2003 as I complete this article, and I am
reading a report from Diyarbakır in the Radikal newspaper. It is a news item stating that this time, the necessary announcements were made both in Kurdish and Turkish: “PKK/PRD operation in Diyarbakır: 2 dead.” The incident took place in the Bağlar neighbourhood. A sentence from a statement released by the governorship reads as follows: “Security forces repeatedly called out with a loudspeaker in both Kurdish and Turkish, asking those in the cell house to surrender.”