Enabled Silence: Mechanisms of Linguistic Self-Suppression Among Kurds in the Post-Assimilation Era
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Abstract
While external repression of Kurdish identity through state policies has been widely documented, the phenomenon of self-suppression within Kurdish households remains understudied. This paper examines how sociopolitical systems in Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran historically enabled Kurdish families to abandon their mother tongue voluntarily, transforming imposed silence into an inherited behavior. By analyzing institutional, psychological, and symbolic mechanisms of control, this paper argues that the true divide among Kurds today is not geopolitical, but linguistic: between those who retained Kurdish as a medium of identity and those whose families internalized its repression.
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1. Introduction
The Kurdish question has traditionally been analyzed through territorial and political frameworks: partition, nationalism, and minority rights. However, beneath these macro-level divisions lies a subtler process of identity fragmentation — the linguistic disconnection between Kurds who speak Kurdish and those who do not. This divide transcends national borders and persists in diasporic communities. It is not merely the product of overt prohibition but of long-term social engineering that made silence appear rational, patriotic, and even virtuous.
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2. Historical Context of Linguistic Repression
Following the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), emergent nation-states such as Turkey, Iraq, and Iran embarked on homogenization projects to consolidate state identity. Kurdish was banned from education, administration, and media. In Turkey, Law No. 2932 (1983) criminalized public use of Kurdish until the early 1990s, while in Syria, the Ba‘ath regime denied Kurds citizenship and restricted Kurdish publications. These policies sought not merely to silence the Kurdish language, but to replace it with official state languages as symbols of loyalty.
The assimilation process, however, did not end with the repeal of legal bans. Instead, its logic was absorbed into Kurdish social structures themselves. Parents, shaped by decades of fear, began to reproduce state ideology at home — an outcome that Michel Foucault would describe as the internalization of disciplinary power.
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3. The Institutional Enablers of Silence
3.1 Education as Cultural Conditioning
School systems were the primary vector of linguistic assimilation. Textbooks portrayed national identity as monolingual and unitary. Kurdish children, punished or humiliated for using their mother tongue, quickly learned to compartmentalize: the public language became a symbol of success; Kurdish, of backwardness. In many households, this hierarchy persisted long after formal bans were lifted.
3.2 Bureaucratic Assimilation
Access to economic and social mobility required compliance with official linguistic norms. Kurdish names were Turkified or Arabized; state documents refused Kurdish orthography. In such a context, non-Kurdish fluency became a form of capital, while Kurdish speech implied social risk. Consequently, many families ceased transmitting Kurdish not out of rejection, but as an act of pragmatic adaptation.
3.3 Media and Symbolic Power
The monopolization of public discourse by state media ensured that Kurdish identity appeared marginal or even subversive. Until the 2000s, Kurdish voices were largely absent from mainstream platforms, reinforcing the perception that Kurdishness existed only in private spaces or folklore.
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4. Psychological Mechanisms of Internalized Repression
Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic violence provides a framework for understanding how dominated groups internalize their subordination. When linguistic repression persists over generations, fear becomes habitus — a deep-seated disposition. Families begin to police their own children, not because they reject their roots, but because they have learned that silence ensures safety.
This internalized fear produces what can be termed “enabled silence”: a state in which individuals voluntarily continue the repression once imposed upon them. The enabler is not coercion, but the memory of coercion.
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5. The Linguistic Divide Within Kurdish Identity
Today, the Kurdish linguistic divide manifests not as rural versus urban, nor as regional difference (Kurmanji, Sorani, etc.), but as an existential split: between speakers and non-speakers. The former can engage in activism, literature, and transnational dialogue; the latter often experience identity paralysis — they “feel Kurdish” but lack the linguistic means to articulate belonging.
This divide is exacerbated by the perception that language retention equates to authenticity, relegating non-speakers to a secondary status within their own ethnicity. The consequence is a fragmented national consciousness, where political solidarity is undermined by linguistic insecurity.
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6. Conclusion: Reclaiming the Right to Voice
The persistence of silence among some Kurdish families cannot be understood merely as a failure of cultural transmission; it is the result of structural conditioning. Reclaiming Kurdish identity, therefore, requires more than language revival — it demands the dismantling of the psychological and institutional mechanisms that made forgetting seem normal.
Grassroots movements, digital platforms, and diaspora initiatives have begun to bridge the divide by creating safe spaces for “language-lost Kurds.” Through music, online courses, and bilingual media, they reframe Kurdish not as a risk, but as a right.
Ultimately, the struggle for linguistic revival is not simply about words — it is about restoring the capacity to speak existence itself after generations of enforced silence.
7. Bilingual Self-Justification: The Quiet Strategy of Visibility
Another symptom of enabled silence appears in the compulsory bilingualism practiced by many Kurds who wish to make their language publicly visible.
In numerous media formats—especially on social platforms—Kurdish is almost always accompanied by a Turkish or Arabic translation.
A simple example can be found in a video by a Kurdish language teacher who states, “Ez mamosteyê Kurdî me” (“I am a Kurdish teacher”), immediately followed by the Turkish equivalent, “Kürtçe öğretmeniyim.”
This doubling is not merely a gesture of accessibility; it reveals a deeply internalized need to legitimize Kurdish through the dominant language.
Kurdish can be spoken, but only when it is instantly translated—embedded within the language of authority.
Thus, even an act of pride remains touched by the residue of justification.
This practice represents a form of post-assimilation adaptation: visibility without provocation.
It allows individuals to express Kurdish identity while staying within the perceived limits of acceptability.
Yet it simultaneously reinforces a symbolic hierarchy: Turkish or Arabic continue to function as the languages of public legitimacy, while Kurdish remains a secondary, explanatory tongue.
Within this framework, bilingual self-justification can be read as a transitional phase—a moment suspended between fear and freedom.
It shows that the silence has been broken, but the voice of the oppressor still echoes faintly within it.
Only when Kurdish can be spoken without translation, without the need to explain itself, will enabled silence truly be overcome.
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References (Suggested)
(These are placeholder sources you can expand depending on your academic context)
Bourdieu, Pierre. Language and Symbolic Power. Harvard University Press, 1991.
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Pantheon Books, 1977.
Hassanpour, Amir. Nationalism and Language in Kurdistan, 1918–1985. Mellen Research University Press, 1992.
Natali, Denise. The Kurds and the State: Evolving National Identity in Iraq, Turkey, and Iran. Syracuse University Press, 2005.
Sheyholislami, Jaffer. Kurdish Identity, Discourse, and New Media. Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.