Gulan 5th February 2007: Living in a bilingual country

http://www.gulan-media.com/h621/g31.pdf

Why Turkey is so afraid of having many cultures and languages? It is a fortune not a threat! I invite Turkish politicians to come to Finland to observe our bilingual country.

There are five million people in Finland. Most of them, 4 700 000 people, speak Finnish as mother language. 300 000 are Swedish speakers. Most of them live in the southwest coast.
I tell sometimes to Turks that we have a well functioning bilingual administration in Finland. They reply to me that Finland is a rich country so it can afford such a thing but Turkey can not. Now Finland is rich but it was not so ninety years ago when it became independent. That was during the first world war.

Since that time Finland has had bilingual administration. It was not expensive decision: each town and village has only one language according to what language the people speak. Only capital Helsinki and some other towns have officially two languages.

Swedish minority has their own mass media, theatre and libraries. Their children have all education in Swedish up to university studies. There is compulsory military service in Finland. Swedish speaking young men do their service in units where the only language is Swedish.
It is compulsory to study both languages in the school. Also the children of the majority must learn the language of the minority. Most people in the young generation speak fluently both languages.

There is also third language in Finland: Saami (*). It is spoken in northern parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. Saami people make co-operation with each others across the boarders.

In Finland there are seven thousands Saami people. They were earlier nomads who lived by raising reindeers. They did not have private land ownership. Saami people still have their unique culture which reflects their close connection with the arctic nature. The Saami language does not have the word ”war”.

Saami people have similar linguistic rights in northern Finland than the Swedish speakers in southwest Finland. Saami children study in Saami and learn Finnish as a foreign language. But Finnish children do not learn their language.

I interviewed last October Mehmet Vecdi Gönül, the Turkish minister of defence. I told him about language policy in Finland. Our Swedish and Lappish people live in peace with the state instead of rebelling against it. I asked Mr. Gönül why Turkey is not trying the same policy with Kurds. He answered:

”In Finland the situation is easy because you have only three languages. Turkey has 28 languages so it is impossible to arrange education in so many languages.”

I hope also Kurdish people in South Kurdistan remember the rights of the minority when their position has changed from minority in Iraq to majority in the area of Kurdistan Regional Government. The rights of Arabic speakers must be protected there the same way as rights Kurdish people in other countries.

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(*) In the Kurdish translation I have used word "Lappish" instead of word Saami (sometimes written Sámi) because "Damascus" is in Kurdish "Sam". When I have tried to tell Kurdish people about the unique culture of Saami people they have always been confused about the word and thought that Saami people have some connections to Damascus. I am aware that Saami people do not accept the term "Lappish" but in a short column for people who know absolutely nothing about Finland it is too difficult to explain that Saami people live in north of the arctic circle, not in some suburb of Damascus. Easiest would have been to write nothing about the Saami people. But for Kurds - "the fighting nation" - it is very important information that there is a language where the word "war" does not exist.