DIYARBAKER, Northern Kurdistan–Mayor of Diyarbakir Osman Baydemir said the local governor will setup new signboards to the villages in Northern Kurdistan with Kurdish names.
In a meeting with the head of villages nearby Baglar district of Diyarbakir while the Mayor listened to the infrastructure problems of the villages, upon request from the villagers, the mayor stated they will replace current signboards with the Kurdish names of the villages at the entrance of the villages, which have been changed by the succeeded Turkish governments and made it in Turkish.
Assimilation Policy of the Turkish State has been performed in different ways. Since the establishment of the new modern Turkish state (as they claim), the authorities adopted different methods to wipe out Kurdish identity. Despite calling it’s political, social structure as democratic and modern, Kurds were experienced assimilation process, which were implemented harshly by the what so called new and modern Turkish state.
Kurdish identity was systematically denied by the Turkish governments, in addition to the language, cultural denial, demographic changes also occurred, and all the places which had Kurdish name, changed into Turkish. These cultural and identity genocide was also implemented by the Turkish authorities in places which was owned by Armenians and Greece people.
“Turkification” of the geographical names in Anatolia started by the Turks with the emergence of the new republic of Turkey. 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 rose to its peak 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 re-naming them with Turkish names.
Although the implementation of the decree delayed due to second world word at that time, in 1949 with passing Provincial Administrations Nr. 5442 by the Turkish legislature and executives, 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, which has been changed is more than 12 thousands, which makes 35% of whole villages in Turkey.