JINHA

NEWS CENTER – Women attended celebrations of Kurdish Language Day in dozens of cities in Northern Kurdistan and Turkey yesterday, where they stressed that it was a fundamentally patriarchal state structure that kept women from speaking their native languages.

At a panel on the survival of the Kurdish language through folklore, held in the city of Siirt, Sevda Basut called attention to the role of women's music and folklore in bringing the Kurdish language to the present day. "The existing patriarchal mindset and the state form, a contrivance of this mindset, stop women from adding richness to language," said Sevda. The academic and Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) candidate Kadri Yıldırım also spoke at the panel.

Several cities held large marches. In Diyarbakır province's Ergani district, Kurdish language foundation KURDI-DER held a festivity of thousands to celebrate the holiday. The cities of Van and Yüksekova, in Hakkari province, also had massive celebrations and marches to celebrate the holiday, with thousands in attendance.

The crowd in Nusaybin, Urfa, Batman and Bingöl condemned the ongoing ban on the Kurdish language with marches and protests. The NGOs KURDI-DER and TZP-Kurdî hosted marches and press statements in the eastern provinces of Muş, Ağrı and Iğdır. In Malatya, Mersin and Adana, the crowds took to the streets in their traditional clothing, chanting the slogan: "no life without language."

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