Abstract
This article addresses Young Turk language policy towards Kurdish in the interwar period. It argues that most Young Turk nationalists treated Turkey's Kurdish minority as assimilable raw ethnic material, as a result of which Kurds became the object of large-scale cultural and linguistic policies aimed at “Turkification”. This article charts how these language policies infringed upon Kurdish life. It will (a) briefly introduce the Young Turk cultural revolution of 1913–1950, (b) discuss how the Young Turk dictatorship perceived the Turkish language as a vehicle for cultural assimilation, and (c) provide a detailed account of one example of a boarding school for Kurdish children. It concludes that there is evidence that a policy of cultural genocide against Kurds was implemented but relativizes its impact by discussing the Kurds' ambivalent reception of those policies.
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