Turkey Persists in Denial of Basic Cultural and Language Rights as Mayor dismissed for Providing Multi-Lingual Services

Turkey's highest administrative court, the Council of State, ruled last week to dismiss Abdullah Demirbaş, Mayor of the Sur district of Diyarbakır because the municipality voted for the provision of services in languages other than Turkish. This represents the latest example of the central government’s inflexible and intolerant stance on linguistic rights. In 2006 the municipality carried out a survey on the linguistic composition of the municipality which found that the proportion of those speaking Turkish is 24%, Kurdish 72%, Arabic 1% and Syriac and Armenian dialects 3%. On the basis of these findings, on October 2006 the Sur municipality voted to provide official services in Turkish, Kurdish, English and Syriac, in order to properly serve the population of this multi-ethnic and multi-lingual municipality.