Kurds have the right to speak Kurdish
Hugo Van Rompaey
Kurdish Institute Brussels
In Kurds have die right la speak Kurdish Hugo Van Rompaey asks attention for one of the important aspeets of people's nationalism: language. It is a basie element of the operational factor of people's nationalism: “culture" and “identity”.
Those who classify nationalism to the domain of imagination or of mythology, or consider it as purely subjective or artificial or as an unhealthy ascription to an ethnic group are, according to Van Rompaey, not right at all. Nationalism is a manifestation of the reality. It has a past, a present and a future. It is not static, but dynamic. It generates itself continuously through the power of at least eigth significant operational factors.
Fascist governments, as the regime in Turkey, do not have the right to kill these operational factors and to commit genocide, nor linguicide, nor onomatocide.
The author makes a convincing analysis of the relevance of people’s nationalism, of the relevance of language for people’s nationalism, of the relevance of the linguistics and of the relevance of Kurdish. The conclusion is clear: Kurds have the right to speak and use Kurdish.
Hugo Van Rompaey (21/02/1943) has been engaged in polities during his professional career (12 years mayor, 18 years member of the Belgian parliament). He studied at the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium, and got following degrees master in classical philology, philosophy, anthropology, religion science, theology and bachelor in arts science. He is preparing a doctorate in theology about the issue Has a people the right to speak its own language? An ethical evaluation of the Kurdish situation in Turkey. The promoter is the ethicus Prof. Dr. Johan De Tavernier. Van Rompaey published several articles in newspapers and reviews and two books: De onderdrukking van de Koerden in Turkije, een misdaad? (2003) and Kruitvat Kaukasus (2004) | 
