Rıfat Roni has spent more than a decade as an official court interpreter facilitating communication for Kurdish speakers in legal proceedings. This week, he found himself in the dock facing charges.
Roni, 59, stood trial on the widely used charge of “membership of an armed organization” on the basis of his involvement in a civil society group, the Mesopotamian Language and Culture Research Association (Med-Der), which offers Kurdish language classes and other activities to promote Kurdish linguistic rights.
The case against Roni is just one among a slew of outrageous cases over the past year in which Kurdish language songs, dances, and promotion of cultural and linguistic rights have been interpreted by the police and prosecutors as evidence of links with terrorism. The prosecutor claimed Roni’s Kurdish language activities and teaching were serving the aims of the armed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Drawing on vague witness testimony but no concrete evidence of criminal activity, the prosecutor concluded the aim of associations like MED-DER was “to secure recruitment of youths to the rural areas [PKK militant recruitment] by using Kurdish language and winning over youths to the ideology of the PKK armed terrorist group”.
Kurdish language classes are barely accessible to most school children in the national education system in Türkiye, even though by law they should be available as a two-hour per week elective option. Associations like MED-DER have tried to offer Kurdish language classes to fill this gap. Despite Roni’s prosecution, MED-DER continues to operate as a legally registered and regularly audited association.
Even though in Roni’s case the court ruled he should be released after three months of pretrial detention, his trial continues and he still faces a possible 5- to 10-year prison sentence if convicted.
As Roni’s lawyers pointed out, countless rulings of the European Court of Human Rights as well as Türkiye’s own Constitutional Court protect cultural activities as part of the right to freedom of expression and association. Recent arrests and investigations against Kurds which equate language activities, songs and dances with terrorism are an abuse of the law that brazenly discriminates against Kurds, disparages their cultural identity and rights and should cease.
