Episode 14: The language barrier between the Kurds and Turks

Our guest was Elvan, a senior from Istanbul. As a Kurdish girl in Turkey, she described her experiences in the social and educational environment. She says she can not comprehend the jokes about the Kurdish identity and admits to being ridiculed and humiliated by reckless students’ mockery. She explained how her relatives and family had difficulty receiving assistance from the government and NGOs during the earthquake of February 2023 because of the language barrier between the majority of the villagers in southeastern Turkey and the municipalities. In fact, she states that her mother was not allowed to speak Kurdish in the elementary school and was oppressed by the police. The structural discrimination and bias toward the Kurds are evident even in the mainstream media outlets that frame the Kurds with violence. Therefore, we sought to change this perspective by evincing the victimhood of the Kurdish community and how that victimhood can not be exploited or politicized by society in any way. We upheld that eradicating the concept of ethnicity as a whole should be society’s main priority to build a united and flourishing structure.