The Power of Literary Tradition: Battling Kurdish Oppression in Türkiye
Scattered across Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Türkiye, the Kurdish minority has faced historical suppression in nearly every space they inhabit—especially by the hand of the Turkish government. Comprising approximately 18 percent of Türkiye’s population, the Kurds are one of the nation’s largest minority groups. Recently, increased alignment between the ruling Justice and Development Party and the right-wing Nationalist Movement Party has spiked anti-Kurdish sentiments across the nation, targeting the Kurdish language and culture.
Since the establishment of the Turkish Republic in 1923, the state has sought to control the Kurdish language in spheres such as education, popular media, and literature. In 1925, the Turkish government passed the “Law on the Maintenance of Order” effectively barring Kurds from public life. Expression of Kurdish identity through vivid stories, plays, and poetry was regarded as explicit defiance against the government. As a result, Kurdish writers and poets including Cegerxwîn and Şêrko Bêkes were banished and forced to write in exile.
Tensions escalated further in the 1980s and 1990s with the rise of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, whose armed struggle for autonomy led to violent clashes with the state. In response, the Turkish government began arresting Kurdish intellectuals and activists on charges of “terrorism” or “propaganda”. Works by prominent writers like Orhan Pamuk were banned or censored for exposing Kurdish issues, and authors were subjected to arbitrary trials and imprisonment as the Turkish government sought to erase Kurdish thought and identity from the public eye.
Until 1991, publishing or recording in the Kurdish language was outright illegal. State institutions worked actively against documentation of Kurdish expression. The Turkish government made some minor concessions, allowing the broadcasting of Kurdish-Language shows in 2002 and permitting Kurdish media and publications in 2003; however, these deceptive reforms only liberalized freedom of press enough to fit membership criteria in Türkiye’s long-standing effort to join the European Union. In practice, restrictions on Kurdish broadcasting and publication remain stringent.
The rise of Recep Erdoğan’s authoritarian government has further fueled this censorship. In September 2024, Turkish police seized books at the Diyarbakir book fair and arrested Kurds on suspicion of terrorism—a charge more accurately attributed to unjust persecution of Kurdish cultural expression. In December 2024, Türkiye banned one hundred twenty Kurdish-language publications in a span of three weeks, prompting the Kurdish Publishers Association (YEW KURD) to call the bans “legally baseless”. Most recently, in early March 2025, three Kurdish writers were detained in house raids in İstanbul and southeastern Türkiye amidst harsh government crackdowns on opposition. Many Kurdish writers have fled the country to avoid persecution, seeking asylum in Europe and the United States where they can write freely.
Despite mounting opposition, Kurdish writers continue to preserve their traditions: not only documenting the plight of their communities, but also how the act of writing has wielded itself as a weapon of resistance. In her novel Yüzünde Bir Yer, Kurdish author Sema Kaygusuz boldly depicts the Dersim Massacre—a genocide against the Kurds persecuted by the Turkish military—while grappling with what it means to write about one’s own oppression in the language of the oppressor. Şener Özmen’s Kurdish novel Pëşbaziya Çîrokën Neqediyayî critiques the scars left by Turkish colonial dominance, contrasting Kaygusuz’s work by addressing these sentiments outside of the Turkish language.
When translating Kurdish works into languages like English and German, the complexity of Kurdish suppression becomes apparent. In a Translation Seminar, part of the Boston University Lecture Series in Literary Translation, anthropologist and translator Nicholas Glastonbury elaborates upon the difficulty of this work. When consulting dictionaries for translation, the frequent use of Turkish translations of Kurdish words underscores the domineering markedness of Turkish on Kurdish culture. How can the Kurdish experience be accurately depicted external to Turkish influence? Is there a way to resolve the challenge of code-switching between Turkish and Kurdish when translating the original work?
Greater accessibility to Kurdish literature helps shed light on the socio-political dynamics of the Kurdish struggle and share knowledge of Kurdish culture in a way that fosters community. Nonetheless, Kurdish translators themselves may face persecution, making it difficult to spread awareness to a global audience in addition to the linguistic challenge of creating the translation.
The suppression of Kurdish literature in Türkiye means more than a lack of access to books and newspapers: it is a blatant refusal of autonomy and personal voice. In the face of oppression, literature functions as a means of survival, building a foundation for collective resistance. Each novel, poem, and translation serves not only as a literary work, but as a protest against each wrongful imprisonment, each displacement of a Kurdish civilian, and each removal of a democratically-elected Kurdish official. The struggle for Kurdish liberation remains long and arduous, but the persistence of Kurdish literary expression in underground circles—despite decades of hard repression—testifies to the resilience of the Kurdish people and hope for a future more free.