Every 2 Weeks a Language Dies: Whether By Assimilation or Targeted Extinction

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When the 7.8 magnitude earthquake tore through southeastern Turkey in 2023, the government posted that it would provide translation support in seven languages: Turkish, Arabic, Persian, English, Russian, German, and Pashto. Kurdish, spoken by fifteen million people in the affected region, was not on the list. Elderly Kurdish speakers cried out for help in their mother tongue and could not be understood. Women were afraid to speak Kurdish for fear of not being rescued. Two days later, the government shut down Twitter entirely. A Kurdish educator named Zara Mohammadi had already been jailed for ten years in Iran for the crime of teaching Kurdish to village children for free. Turkey had banned…