The headline of this article is interesting. What does the language problem of a nation like the Kurds have to do with the prime minister of great power during World War II, Britain? Many of us may not even imagine that such a person knew the Kurds and paid attention to the Kurdish language, but by turning the pages of the history of Kurdish politicians, we sometimes find rare things.
As we know, during World War II, the Second Cairo Conference was attended by the United States, Britain, and Turkey. US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Turkish President Ismet Inonu met at the meeting. The purpose was to discuss whether Turkey should join the Allies in the war against Nazi Germany. As history has shown, Ismet Inonu, Turkey, initially declared neutrality and had excuses, but eventually, in 1945, Turkey participated in World War II in support of the Allied forces.
Turkish Foreign Minister Numan Menemencioglu was also present at the meeting. Eleven years after the war, in 1956, Menemencioglu met Musa Anter through a law professor named Tahir Taner, who was a teacher and friend of the great Kurdish politician and intellectual Musa Anter. They met each other in a friendly meeting. In his memoirs, World War II, Musa Anter mentions this and relates it to language policy in Turkey.
"At the Cairo meeting, the allies will ask Ismet Inonu to join them," said Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, who was retired at the time. “He cites the excuse that the Turkish army is not ready to participate in the war and must be armed by the Allies first. But he also says that because Churchill and Roosevelt did not believe in the Turks, they said, ‘What if we arm them and they join Germany?’”
After the Turkish president refused to join the allies, Menemencioglu said: Churchill and Roosevelt brought up the Kurdish problem and wanted to intimidate us in this way.
The following is the text of the speeches of Churchill, Ismet Inonu, Turkish Foreign Minister, and Churchill's friends on the Kurds:
Churchill said: Well, King, do you know Kurdish?
Ismet Pasha could not answer and Turkish Foreign Minister Menemenci says: Sir, we don't know Kurdish, we don't speak Kurdish, and there is no such language in Turkey.
Churchill, who had taken several orientalists and linguists with him, turned to them and asked them if it was true that there was no Kurdish language in Turkey. Someone whom Churchill asked the question obviously prepared himself in advance. “Of course, there is such a language, and it is a very rich language and literature. If you want, I will read you a poem from the book of Mullah Jaziri, a poet of that language at the time” he said.
Churchill asks him to read it. He reads the poem and says it was Kurdish poetry, sir. Then Churchill asks him to write it down and translate it into English for them. Then he asked to be translated into French and Turkish too. In a short time, the linguist will do all this at the Cairo conference. Finally, Churchill says, "Sir, tell me how many foreign words in each of the three languages the translator had to use in order to express the same feelings as the original language.”
They start counting foreign words. There were no foreign words in the French translation. English contained four or five words of Latin origin. Three or four Arabic words were found in the Kurdish, but when they go to the Turkish translation, they do not find any words that are Turkish except the prepositions, but all Arabic, Persian, and European words.
Churchill put all four translations in front of us and said, “Isn’t it shameful, gentlemen. Look, this is the richness of the Kurdish language and you say there is no such a language.”
"I have never been so ashamed and bored during my tenure as foreign minister," Numan Menemencioglu said.
The importance of this part of Musa Antar's memoirs goes beyond the framework of memoirs and should be discussed as part of the oral history of the Kurds and the region. On the one hand, these statements were said by someone who was himself the Turkish Foreign Minister in Ismet Inonu's cabinet; these words were spoken by the Turkish Foreign Minister in 1956 when violence against the Kurdish language was at its peak. Thousands of Kurds were imprisoned, killed, and tortured for the Kurdish language for decades after that date. This discussion clarifies that the Turkish authorities believed that there was only one language in Turkey until they were in power, but in fact, they knew better than anyone else that there are other languages, including Kurdish, which are spoken by millions of people. Why have they denied it? It is clear that the Kemalist and Turkish ideology has been so racist and inhuman that it has covered up all realities.
Another point that we can get from this oral history is that the Kurds played an important role in political problems until then. That is, it has been the subject of debate among the world powers at the time of world war. At this sensitive time, they have used the Kurds as a card at the negotiating table to strengthen the side of the allies.
A more important point should be mentioned, although people like Churchill and Roosevelt know the Kurdish language and the Kurds well, after the war and the division of the Middle East and the change of the map of the region, and advocated the language and culture at the Cairo Conference, they did not do anything for them. There can be many reasons for this. One is that Turkey joined the Allies in 1945 when it knew that the balance of power turned to them. Then it is the allies changing the map of the region and of course, they have bargained with Turkey. There is a complaint about the Kurdish politicians who could not play their role in politics well back then. In other words, Western countries have made decisions far from the truth and what they cared about was only their own interests, and the Kurds too did not know how to ensure their own interests. Also, the Kurds' enemies have pursued a policy of denial of Kurdish identity and language in the extreme of racism.
