Turkey: Laz Minority Passive In Face Of Assimilation

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Subject: Turkey: Laz Minority Passive In Face Of Assimilation

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Turkey: Laz Minority Passive In Face Of Assimilation


RFE/RL Magazine for June 26-24
 
Turkey: Laz Minority Passive In Face Of Assimilation
 
By Jolyon Naegele
 
Camlihemsin, Turkey, 25 June 1998 (RFE/RL) --The fog-covered and
rain-drenched Black Sea coast and nearby mountain valleys of
northeastern Turkey are home to an ethnic group, which, some say, is
facing the danger of extinction through assimilation.
 
The Laz are estimated to number some 90,000 in Turkey. Of them, some
30,000 speak Laz as their mother tongue. They also inhabit adjacent
districts of Georgia.
 
Physically, they tend to have light complexions, freckles and
sandy-colored hair. They are Muslims and speak a Kartvelian language
related to Mengrelian and more distantly to Georgian. Until recently,
Laz had only an oral tradition. In the 1980s, a German scholar,
Wolfgang Feuerstein, developed an orthography for Laz, but it until
now has failed to attract a significant following.
 
The Laz are passive, lacking organization and any formal education in
their mother tongue. Few express any concern that their language could
vanish within two generations as the massive spread of satellite
antennae makes Turkish mass culture accessible to even the most remote
mountain hamlets.

Erzurum University professor, Ibrahim Yerebakan, a Laz from Hopa,
denies that Laz language is under threat since everyone in the region
is bilingual.
 
"I have never felt that my language, my mother tongue, is under threat
because it is not taught at schools since it is a spoken language. It
will remain a spoken language. Therefore we don't need to revitalize
it as the Welsh people did. There is no suppression of the language
whatsoever and throughout the ages it has been used by people living
in the Turkish section as well as the Georgian section.

Yerebakan says the Laz have renewed cross-border contacts since the
collapse of the Soviet Union.

In the Turkish mountain town of Camlihemsin, 80 km southeast of the
Georgian port of Batumi, Laz residents also say they have no sense of
potential threat to their mother tongue.

Metin Satiroglu, a 30-year-old truck driver, says he speaks Laz at
home with his family, but with everyone else he speaks Turkish. He
says no books are available in the Laz language and Camlihemsin's Laz
have not organized themselves in any way. He notes a local private FM
radio station and a TV station in Rize on the coast broadcasts folk
music of the Laz and neighboring Hemsin minorities but news and other
programming is only in Turkish.
 
Satiroglu notes the Laz continue to build timber homes on stilts in an
identical traditional style and that the Laz remain the subject of
continuing research by ethnographers and linguists. But Satiroglu says
he is convinced the Laz will still be widely spoken in villages 30
years from now.

"In most villages, babies learn Laz on their mothers' knees and only
start learning Turkish once they go to school."

Another Laz in Camlihemsin, Ahmet Parlagi (Parlayi), a court clerk,
also says that the language is not about to disappear.
 
"With the exception of having our own language, we do not feel
ourselves any different from the Turks" Parlagi notes some local
newspapers publish columns in Laz and a Laz-language magazine, Ogni,
is published by Laz living in Istanbul.  But he says it will be a very
long time before the Turkish Education Ministry comes around to the
idea of permitting instruction in minority languages such as Laz.
 
Shopkeeper Adem Kurkut says without Turkish one simply can not get
ahead in life. He says some parents no longer speak Laz to their
children out of fear that they could have problems when they start
going to Turkish schools. Kurkut says he did not speak a word of
Turkish when he started going to school, adding it was very difficult
for him to understand what was going on until he learned Turkish. In
his words, "there is no difference between us Laz and the Turks, the
most important thing is to be a human being. To be a Laz today, he
says, is to be young in spirit; not to fight but take advantage of
one's rights, to look after one's self and not be an obstacle to
others."

Kurkut volunteers to sing a Laz cowherd's lovesong to visitors to his
simple cloth and thread shop.
 
25-06-98

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