By Murat Bayram — International Mother Language Day, February 21
Every February 21, the world marks International Mother Language Day — a UNESCO-designated occasion to celebrate linguistic diversity and the fundamental right to receive information, education, and culture in one’s native language. For Turkey’s 25 million Kurdish citizens, the day is less a celebration than a measure of distance: how far the right to news in one’s mother tongue remains from reality.
The numbers are unambiguous. Turkey’s Kurdish speakers have access to only four Turkey-based daily news sites in their own language. Among the country’s 2,071 newspapers, not one publishes daily in Kurdish. Not one of the 2,182 magazines is in Kurdish. A single weekly newspaper exists — Azadiya Welat . Among 544 television channels, only the state-owned TRT Kurdî broadcasts Kurdish news, and its journalists receive their training in Turkish.
A Vanishing Print Landscape
According to Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK) data, more than 90% of Turkey’s 2,071 newspapers are local publications. None publishes daily in Kurdish. Among 2,182 magazines, not one produces Kurdish news content. The weekly Azadiya Welat is the sole Kurdish print publication in the country.
The history of Kurdish print journalism in Turkey is a history of obstruction. Abdullah Keskin, founding chief editor of Welat — Turkey’s first Kurdish newspaper, launched in 1992 — recalls the period after the ban on public use of Kurdish was lifted: “There were no Kurdish-speaking journalists. I was trying to learn by myself. The first issue sold 24,000 through distribution companies, approximately 30,000 with direct distribution.”
Decades later, the obstacles had not disappeared. Çetin Altun, editor of the last Kurdish daily Welat, describes how it ended: “Even though we paid, printing houses didn’t want to print our newspaper. Every printing house that printed it faced police raids under some pretext. We considered buying a printing press, but if we invested all our resources in one and it was confiscated, we would face an even worse situation. We photocopied our last issues. The young people distributing them were detained. We couldn’t continue.”
Four Daily News Sites — and the Walls Around Them
Today, four Turkey-based platforms publish daily Kurdish news:
Botan Times is the only site with a formal institutional structure, operating as an organ of Botan International Media Ltd. Co. With 58 writers and 151 paid subscribers, it is the only Kurdish news platform in Turkey generating reader revenue.
Azadiya Welat (Weekly) operates alongside the only Kurdish weekly newspaper in Turkey. Azadiya Welat Weekly continues its publication as the successor to Azadiya Welat, founded in 1992, and as a media outlet of the Kurdish political movement. The same group also includes Ajansa Welat, JinNews, and Mezopotamya Agency. The group defines itself as the Free Media.
Diyarname, with 20 years of publication, is the oldest Kurdish news site in the country and the only one based outside Diyarbakır(İstanbul). Diyarname is maintained by volunteers. Veteran journalist Cemil Oguz has been voluntarily managing the publication for 20 years. In addition to culture and literature news, it also produces reports aligned with the Kurdish political movement.
Zazaki News is the only platform publishing daily in the Zazaki dialect of Kurdish. In 2025, a striking trend emerged within the Kurdish media sector not a single institution—neither traditional nor digital—managed to secure international funding this year. In a significant departure from this trend, zazakinews.com, an independent news platform of Kurdish journalist Enver Yılmaz, became the only Kurdish media outlet to receive support from the European Endowment for Democracy (EED).
None of the 22,798 businesses in Diyarbakır advertise on Kurdish news sites. Azadiya Welat is the only platform receiving advertising from local organizations and municipalities (of the DEM Party).
Kurdish news sites face a structural double blockade on revenue. Google AdSense does not recognize Kurdish as a supported language, eliminating digital advertising income. The Turkish Press Advertising Agency (BİK) does not provide official announcements or advertising to Kurdish publications, cutting off traditional media revenue. Kurdish platforms are locked out of both income streams available to every other outlet.
The State Monopoly on Kurdish Broadcasting
On International Mother Language Day, TRT Kurdî stands as the only television channel in Turkey providing national Kurdish news programming. The state also controls the only national Kurdish radio station through TRT Kurdî Radio, and Anadolu Agency — which offers Sorani and Kurmanji language options — is state-owned as well.
The double standard within TRT’s own structure is telling. TRT World broadcasts English content without Turkish subtitles. TRT Arabi broadcasts Arabic content without Turkish subtitles. TRT Kurdî, however, includes Turkish subtitles on its broadcasts, carries Turkish-language institutional content on its social media, and trains its journalists in Turkish — not Kurdish.
The consequences reach into the language itself. Kurdish belongs to the Indo-European language family and flows with a connected, wave-like prosody, much like English. Turkish diction separates words into distinct, staccato units. Trained in Turkish, TRT Kurdî journalists produce a mechanical rendering of Kurdish that exists nowhere in the natural spoken language. The existence of a state Kurdish channel does not safeguard Kurdish media — it risks corrupting the language it claims to serve.
Kurdish Sections Inside Turkish language Institutions
A number of Turkish-language media organizations include Kurdish-language sections or content options: Mezopotamya Ajansı, bianet, AmidaHaber, Medyascope, JinNews, Anadolu Agency, and TRT. But their primary working language is Turkish, and their Kurdish-language output consists largely of translations from Turkish-language productions. They are Turkish media institutions with Kurdish windows — not Kurdish media institutions.
This distinction matters. Until 2024, Turkey had no news agency whose primary working language was Kurdish. That year, Ajansa Welat was founded — the first Kurdish-language news agency in Turkey’s history. Its emergence marks a genuine threshold. But a single agency cannot compensate for the structural absence of Kurdish-language media institutions across the entire sector.
The Institutionalization Gap
Outside the state and the Kurdish political movements, Botan International is the only Kurdish media institution in Turkey.
It is evident that the state media acts as a mouthpiece for the AK Party; in fact, its Kurdish broadcasts are even more overtly pro-government than its Turkish counterparts.
The structural problem is unchanged: no organization that funds media in Turkey directs any of that support toward Kurdish media institutions. No funding exists, from any source, for establishing new Kurdish media organizations or sustaining existing ones. Kurdish media cannot institutionalize.
In March 2025, Botan International and the Digital Media Association will launch a local media support project backed by the German Embassy, involving the eight local newspapers in Diyarbakır. All eight of those newspapers, however, publish entirely in Turkish. A project designed to strengthen local media has no Kurdish-language press left to include.
The Education Ban
The right to receive news in one’s mother tongue requires journalists capable of producing it. Kurdish media education is formally banned in Turkey. Media training is offered at 74 Turkish universities; hundreds of Turkish-language media programs run annually, many funded by European countries. Almost none of those funds reach Kurdish-language training.
Botan International, founded in 2020, remains the only Kurdish media education organization in Turkey. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is the first international organization to have supported a Kurdish media education project, EED is the second. Every other funder directs media education resources exclusively to Turkish-language programs.
A survey conducted with Harvard University academics found that 20% of botantimes.com readers hold master’s or doctoral degrees. This is not a sign of success. It reflects the depth of the problem: Kurdish literacy in Turkey is so restricted that independent Kurdish journalism reaches only a thin, highly educated sliver of its potential audience. The language is spoken by an estimated 18–20 million people who consider it their mother tongue at home. The tools to report and read the news in that language are available to far fewer.
A Short Spring, Then Winter
The AKP government’s “peace process” (2009–2015) produced a brief opening. Dozens of local Kurdish television channels and newspapers launched; at least seven of Diyarbakır’s eight local newspapers added Kurdish pages; long-term planning and technical investment became possible.
When the peace process collapsed in 2015 and the 2016 coup attempt followed, that opening closed. Nine television channels in Diyarbakır that had been broadcasting in Kurdish — among them Azadî TV, Gün TV, and children’s channel Zarok TV — were shut down or had their equipment confiscated. Seven never returned to air. Batman lost its only local television channel when Denge TV was closed and never replaced. All eight local newspapers in Diyarbakır now publish entirely in Turkish. Kurdish pages have vanished completely.
In 2017, Kurdistan24, Waar TV, and Rûdaw TV — broadcasting from the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and available to Turkish audiences via satellite — were removed from Türksat and had their licenses canceled. The stated reason: these channels referred to the Kurdistan geographic region as “Kurdistan,” the same term Turkey’s own president and prime minister had publicly used.
Mainstream Kurdish Media Is Not in Turkey
The dominant Kurdish-language television channels are based in Erbil. European-based Kurdish channels and agencies operate without their own offices or logos in Turkey. For Kurds in Turkey who want news in Kurdish — and who are among the estimated portion of Kurdish speakers literate enough in the language to access it — the choice is between foreign satellite broadcasts and four small, under-resourced websites.
This is not a media market problem. It is a rights problem.
What the Day Demands
International Mother Language Day is not only a celebration of diversity. It is a recognition that language rights require active protection — through policy, funding, and institutional support. For Kurdish citizens in Turkey, those protections are absent.
Kurdish media must cease to be treated as a security issue.
International media funders must stop treating support solely for Turkish-language journalism—which already benefits from dozens of university programs and an established institutional infrastructure—as a proxy for press freedom. Instead, they must prioritize the disadvantaged Kurdish media education and intellectual platforms that are systematically deprived of these very opportunities.
BİK and Google must extend their frameworks to include Kurdish. And journalism in Kurdish must be recognized as a profession — one whose practitioners deserve economic sustainability, not just the burden of ideological survival.
The right to receive news in one’s mother tongue is not a cultural preference. It is a fundamental human right. For 25 million Kurdish citizens in Turkey, that right is still waiting.
Murat Bayram is the founder of Botan International, Turkey’s first Kurdish media education office, based in Diyarbakır, a permanent partner of Reporters Without Borders (RSF)
Author Profile
- Avakarê Botan International û Botan Timesê ye. Bayramî ji bilî medyaya kurdî ji bo New York Times, Al Jazeera International, Deutsche Welle, Middle East Eye û RT TVyê kar kiriye. Wî li bernameya fellowshipê ya Rojnamegerîya Dîjîtal ya Zanîngeha Oxfordê(Enstîtûya REUTERSî ya Xebatên Rojnamegerîyê) li Ingilîzîstanê û Acadêmie Franceyê perwerde standiye. Zanîngeha Kalîforniayê ya Los Angelesê(UCLA) xelata “Nivîsîna herî afrînêr û orjînal” û Yekîtîya Rojnamegerên Başûrê Rojhilatî xelata “Rojnamegerê salê” daye wî. Nivîskarê “belkî îşev binive”yê ye (Weşanxaneya Avestayê, 2018). Ew yek ji nivîskarên Ferhenga Nûçegihanîya Zayenda Civakî: Kurdî-Tirkî û wergêrê 11 kitêban e. Wî edîtoriya 52 kitêban kiriye.
Latest entries
#YouAreAllWeHave – Support Kurdish Media!
