Etiket parliament

February 21 is the International Mother Tongue Day, said Ahmet Turk, the leader of the Democratic Society Party (DTP) addressing his party’s parliamentary group meeting at the Turkish National Assembly. “Everybody should be able to use his mother tongue freely,” he went on in Turkish. DTP leader then switched on to Kurdish and TRT 3, the official channel that broadcasts from the Turkish Parliament live switched off Turk’s image and voice from the air. Actually Turk, whose party is in a neck-to-neck race in the Kurdish provinces of Turkey with Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) was making a clever countermove against Erdogan’s recent policies to woo the Kurds. In his election rallies in Diyarbakir and other southeastern Turkish provinces Erdogan has been using the opening of TRT 6, an official television channel broadcasting in Kurdish, saluting the crowds using few Kurdish words like “I wish all the good for you,” etc. Actually, on the day TRT 6 began its Kurdish broadcasts, Erdogan appeared on the screen with a speech that he finished off in Kurdish. Recently, Erdogan announced that his government was in touch with the widow of popular Kurdish singer Ahmet Kaya who died in Paris in exile in 2000, to bring his remains back to Turkey. “If the prime minister is talking in Kurdish why can’t I?” asked Turk. Pointing out that several mayors and even some parliament members were penalized because they spoke in Kurdish, Turk said, “Does that mean that the Kurdish language is free to use for the government members but it is prohibited for the Kurds?” After stopping Turk’s speech in Kurdish, a TRT announcer appeared on the screen saying that using any other language than Turkish under the roof of the parliament is prohibited. “There is no legal sanction […]