HDP blasts Turkey ban on words Kurdistan, genocide

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan24) - Turkey's pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) on Friday lambasted a recent resolution by the Turkish government to ban the use of the words 'Kurdistan' and genocide' at the Parliament.

HDP’s spokesperson Osman Baydemir said they wouldn't abide by the new regulation that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), and its far-right ally in the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) ratified last week.

"We will not keep quiet. We will call the Kurds, Kurdish. We will call Kurdistan, Kurdistan. And if there has been a genocide somewhere, we will name it genocide. In other words, we will not bow to fascism," Baydemir, also an MP for the Sanliurfa Province said.

The new law does not explicitly list banned words, terms or phrases but gives outlines on what not to say.

It states that MPs cannot use definitions that are "in violation of the administrative structure" as defined by the "indivisible wholeness" of the Republic of Turkey, thus effectively preventing lawmakers from referring to the Kurdish-majority regions as Kurdistan.

Baydemir along the party's co-leader Serpil Kemalbay has been leading a days-long demonstration in the major Kurdish city of Diyarbakir against Turkish authorities' crackdown on the HDP.

"They are founding a regime in which speech in the Parliament is banned," Baydemir said of the government, reported Kurdistan 24's Diyarbakir Bureau.

Using the term "genocide" in relation to the 1915 systematic extermination and deportation of the Armenian people by the Ottoman government, or "massacre" when referring to the numerous military campaigns against the Kurds since the beginning of the 20th century were also outlawed.

In Ankara, MP Lezgin Botan of the Van Province put a parliamentary question regarding the ban.

Botan asked the Speakership to explain the reasoning behind outlawing 'Kurdistan' in speech despite historical evidence that Kurdish settled areas have for a millennium been known as Kurdistan.

In the several-pages-long question released on HDP website, Botan also reminded that Erdogan himself had used the word 'Kurdistan' in previous speeches in reference to even the country's southeast.

"A nation's historical existence, its linguistic features, and onomastics are realities that cannot be banned or changed with bylaws," Botan stated.

Earlier this week, MP Imam Tascier of Diyarbakir defied the ban at the Parliament.

"I am a Kurd. My mother tongue is Kurdish and where I was born is Kurdistan. That's how it is for thousands of years since my ancestors' times," Tascier said, asking whether he would now be punished.

Editing by Ava Homa