Unidentified people have defaced Kurdish-language traffic signs in the eastern provinces of Diyarbakır and Van, in what appears to be a racially motivated attack on the minority language, the Stockholm Center for Freedom reported, citing various reports in the Turkish media.
In Van on Friday, unknown individuals painted over Kurdish pedestrian crossing warnings, which originally read “Pêşî Peya (Pedestrians First),” replacing them with the nationalist slogan “Turkey is for Turks and will remain Turkish.”
The local municipality condemned the act as a “racist attack” and promptly restored the original messages the same day.
Meanwhile, a 16-year-old boy has admitted to Turkish media that he was responsible for the defacement in his city.
Speaking anonymously to the Kısa Dalga news website, he said that he acted because he disagreed with the idea of having street signs in Kurdish.
The boy claimed he had consulted with both a lawyer and a contact in the counterterrorism police before carrying out the vandalism and that they assured him he would face minimal repercussions.
“I vandalized the street signs because I did not like the idea of having them in Kurdish,” the boy explained. “I consulted a lawyer before the incident, who informed me that the worst I could face would be a charge for property damage, which could be mitigated since the spray paint could be washed off. He said that if necessary, we could take the case to the Constitutional Court, where Article 3 of the constitution would support our defense.”
Article 3 of the Turkish Constitution stipulates that Turkish alone is the official language of Turkey.
The boy also mentioned that his contact in the counterterrorism police advised him to be cautious but assured him that any repercussions would be manageable.
According to him, the police visited his home after the incident.
“Officers told me not to worry. They understood my nationalist sentiments and commended me, although they warned me that such actions are not suitable for the eastern provinces [as they host a sizable Kurdish population]. They promised to help as much as possible,” he said.
Similarly, early Sunday morning, three unidentified men used brushes and paint to deface Kurdish traffic signs. Other incidents were also reported across several other locations across Diyarbakır.
The Turkish state has in the past severely restricted the use of the Kurdish language and strictly denied it official recognition, including at the local and provincial levels, despite the fact that it is the language of the country’s largest minority.
The visibility of Kurdish on TV and in the print media was only made possible in the early 2000s thanks to significant progress made in the country’s bid to become a member of the EU.
Yet, the drift towards nationalism and the ruling Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) alliance with the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) in the last decade has led to an increase in anti-Kurdish racist attacks.