Turkey's Language Erasure and Genocide Legacy

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Turkey, a member of the Council of Europe, has implemented linguistic policies that have resulted in the extinction of many native languages spoken on its soil. The European Day of Languages, celebrated on September 26, highlights the importance of linguistic diversity, yet Turkey’s approach has been starkly different.

Language Loss and Genocide

Languages such as Cappadocian Greek and Mlahso, an Aramaic dialect, are now extinct in Turkey. Hértevin and Turoyo (Surayt), both Aramaic dialects, are severely endangered. Additionally, Pontic Greek (Romeyka), Laz, Western Armenian, and Homshetsma are all endangered and at risk of extinction.

Ladino, traditionally spoken by Turkey’s Jewish community, is also classified as a severely endangered language. The fate of these communities mirrors the fate of their languages. Jews, Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians, and other non-Turkish citizens of Turkey were not simply choosing to stop speaking their native languages. Instead, most were massacred, deported, or forced to leave their ancestral homelands. Those who remained faced immense pressure to cease speaking their languages.

Genocide and Cultural Erasure

The Ottoman Empire and the Turkish nationalist movement carried out a systematic campaign of genocide against indigenous Armenian, Assyrian, and Greek populations between 1913 and 1923. This resulted in approximately 3 million deaths and the near-total elimination of these communities from Anatolia.

The genocide targeted not only the lives of Christians but also their cultural heritage, including schools that they had built through much sacrifice and hard work. Despite facing severe difficulties in acquiring building permissions, Armenians successfully established a vast educational network of nearly 2,000 schools serving over 17,000 pupils in eastern Turkey prior to World War I. Today, no Armenian schools remain in eastern Turkey, and only 16 are left in Istanbul.

Reports show Armenian schools in the country operate without government funding, relying on private donations while continuing to encounter systematic discrimination. The Armenian Patriarchate data confirms the steady demographic decline of Turkey’s Armenian population. In 2025, the community recorded 183 baptisms and 527 funerals, with an estimated population of around 40,000.

Minority Education and Legal Rights

In 2021, it was reported that Turkey’s 22 remaining Armenian, Jewish, and Greek community schools were grappling with budget deficits and dropping student numbers. Garo Paylan, an Armenian deputy of the opposition Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), said that ‘Armenians, Greeks and Jews are trying to keep minority schools alive, and they are trying to pay salaries for their teachers, and to meet the needs of students, but they do not have enough resources.’

Of all minority communities in Turkey, the Assyrian community experiences the most acute marginalization concerning the right to education in its native language. This practice constitutes a direct violation of the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), which legally requires the state to uphold their educational and civic rights. However, the educational rights of Assyrians/Syriacs have never been protected, despite being a non-Muslim minority of the country.

The last Assyrian/Syriac school in the city of Mardin closed in 1928, leaving the community without formal education in its mother tongue for decades. Following a rejected request in 2012 and a subsequent two-year legal battle, the Assyrian community won the right to open a kindergarten in Istanbul. However, they lack government financial support, as well as classes at the primary and secondary levels.

Source: PJ Media