Over 1.3 million Kurdish books published in five years: Minister

ANKARA

Around 1.3 million books in the Kurdish language have been published in Turkey over the last five years, according to a senior official.

Answering the questions of lawmakers during the budget negotiations at the Turkish Parliament, Culture and Tourism Minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy said that 1.31 million approval labels were obtained for 1,431 books published in Kurdish between 2016 and 2021.

Refuting the criticisms of Ebru Günay and Nuran İmir, two lawmakers from the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), that no books were published in the Kurdish language, Ersoy gave information to the parliament about the works of his ministry for the Kurdish language.

“Six major works have been published so far, four major works are to be ready by the end of 2022, we are now towards the end of [the efforts],” Ersoy said, noting that the efforts for 20 additional classical works were expected to be completed in 2022.

He added that the two audio publications prepared by the ministry include audio works in Kurdish, Armenian, Arabic, Syriac, Bosnian, Azerbaijani, Kazakh, Laz, Zazaki and Greek.

Stressing that a theater play based on an old epic poem written by Ahmad Khani in 1692 in the Kurmanji dialect of Kurdish was staged both in the eastern provinces of Van and Diyarbakır, the minister denied the allegations that Kurdish theater plays were not staged.

“There were 61 performances of the work at the Diyarbakır State Theater in the 2012-2013 art season, and 38 performances at the Van State Theater in the 2018-2019 art season,” he said.