Turkish state television cut off live broadcasting on Tuesday when the head of the largest pro-Kurdish party began addressing his parliamentary deputies in the Kurdish language. The incident highlighted tensions in the European Union candidate over the issue of using the once-banned language in public despite recent government moves to ease restrictions, including launching a Kurdish state channel.
It also took place before March 29 municipal elections in which the ruling AK Party is locked in a close battle with the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP) in Diyarbakir, the largest city in the Kurdish south-east region. "In order to show that there is nothing to fear in using other languages and to emphasise brotherhood of languages during the International Day of Mother Tongues, let me continue my speech in Kurdish," DTP leader Ahmet Turk told a gathering of DTP members before he went off the air.
Under Turkish law, it is illegal for Turkish politicians to make political speeches in a language other than Turkish, although the new state Kurdish channel translated and aired a speech made by Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan at an election rally in Diyarbakir on Saturday. "The constitution and the law on political parties bans the use of any language other than Turkish in parliament and in group meetings. Therefore we had to cut the live broadcast and we apologise for this," TRT said in a statement. Nihat Ergun, deputy chairman of the AK Party's parliament group, called Turk's speech a "provocation".
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