Mayor of Diyarbakir Baydemir announces new village signboards in Kurdish
Mayor of Diyarbakir Baydemir announces new village signboards in Kurdish
Mayor of Diyarbakir Osman Baydemir said the municipality will erect Kurdish signboards with village names on them.
In a meeting with the head of villages around Baglar district of Diyarbakir while the Mayor listened to the infrastructure problems of the villages upon request from the villagers he also said they will erect signboards with the Kurdish names of the villages at the entrance of the villages which have been changed and made Turkish.
Assimilation Policy of the Turkish State
On one hand the Turkish government was denying the existence of the Kurds and was prohibiting the Kurdish language on the other hand it has changed all the Kurdish geographical names. Armenian, Greek and Laz names have shared the same fate with Kurds.
"Turkification" of the geographical names in Anatolia started at the very early years of the republic. For instance, most of the settlement names in Artvin province in Black Sea region were Georgian and they were modified and re-named with Turkish names in 1925.
This "Turkification" practices peaked in 1940 following the decree Nr. 8589 from the Ministry of Interior which was prescribing removing non-Turkish names, mostly Kurdish, Armenian and Laz language, of the settlements and renaming them with Turkish names.
Although the implementation of the decree delayed due to second world word going on that time in 1949 with the Law on Provincial Administrations Nr. 5442 re-naming the villages reached a legal basis.
The Specialised Board of Re-naming was founded in 1957 which was abolished in 1978, when they started to change the names of the historical sites.
It is estimated that the number of the villages whose names been changed is more than 12 thousands which makes 35% of whole villages in Turkey.
In a meeting with the head of villages around Baglar district of Diyarbakir while the Mayor listened to the infrastructure problems of the villages upon request from the villagers he also said they will erect signboards with the Kurdish names of the villages at the entrance of the villages which have been changed and made Turkish.
Assimilation Policy of the Turkish State
On one hand the Turkish government was denying the existence of the Kurds and was prohibiting the Kurdish language on the other hand it has changed all the Kurdish geographical names. Armenian, Greek and Laz names have shared the same fate with Kurds.
"Turkification" of the geographical names in Anatolia started at the very early years of the republic. For instance, most of the settlement names in Artvin province in Black Sea region were Georgian and they were modified and re-named with Turkish names in 1925.
This "Turkification" practices peaked in 1940 following the decree Nr. 8589 from the Ministry of Interior which was prescribing removing non-Turkish names, mostly Kurdish, Armenian and Laz language, of the settlements and renaming them with Turkish names.
Although the implementation of the decree delayed due to second world word going on that time in 1949 with the Law on Provincial Administrations Nr. 5442 re-naming the villages reached a legal basis.
The Specialised Board of Re-naming was founded in 1957 which was abolished in 1978, when they started to change the names of the historical sites.
It is estimated that the number of the villages whose names been changed is more than 12 thousands which makes 35% of whole villages in Turkey.
