In Catalonia, a 400-strong community launches a new association to defend a culture and language long persecuted across four states.

“Until I was six, I only spoke Kurdish. But when I started school, Turkish forced its way into my life. I didn’t reclaim my mother tongue until university. I learned to read and write in my own language at 20.”

Mukaddes Akin was born in a tiny village near Amed, the capital of Bakur – Northern Kurdistan, or what is commonly known as Turkish Kurdistan – where Kurdish was the language of everyday life. From childhood, she experienced the repression and harassment – linguistic, political and cultural – endured by Kurds for more than a century, to varying degrees, across the four states that divide their homeland: Turkey, Iran, Syria and Iraq. That repression has often manifested in the simple act of speaking Kurdish in public – at school, in the street or in hospital.

Akin, who has lived in exile in Barcelona for seven years, has refused to renounce her culture despite violence and repeated attempts at assimilation. “When I recovered my language, I decided to stop writing in Turkish. Whenever I can, I prefer to communicate in my Kurdish dialect, Kurmanji.”

A language persecuted in four states

Kurdistan is widely described as the world’s largest stateless nation. An estimated 30 to 40 million Kurds live across the globe, though no precise census exists. In the early 20th century, amid decolonisation and in the aftermath of the First World War, the Middle East was carved up into the modern states we know today. The Kurdish population was split between them, divided into four regions: Bakur (North, in Turkey), Rojava (West, in Syria), Başûr (South, in Iraq) and Rojhilat (East, in Iran).

Kurdistan spans up to 500,000 square kilometres between the Taurus mountains in eastern Anatolia and the Zagros range on the western edge of the Iranian plateau.

Kurdish, the majority language of this territory, is an Iranian language belonging to the Indo-European family. It has several dialects, the two principal ones being Kurmanji (spoken mainly in Turkey, Syria and western Iraq) and Sorani (predominant in eastern Iraq and Iran).

For decades, Kurdish was systematically repressed in all four states. Only in recent years have shifting political dynamics in Iraq and Syria allowed forms of autonomy and official recognition.

In Başûr Iraq’s Kurdistan Region, established in the 1990s and consolidated in the 2005 Iraqi constitution following the 2003 US-led invasion, Kurdish was recognised as an official language. In northern and eastern Syria – the Autonomous Administration commonly known as Rojava – Kurdish achieved unprecedented recognition in 2014 after Kurdish militias defeated Islamic State in parts of the territory during the Syrian civil war.

The region remains unrecognised internationally, with the notable exception of the Parliament of Catalonia, which acknowledged it in 2021. Before 2014, Kurds in Syria were marginalised for decades: banned from using their language publicly, forbidden from celebrating Newroz, the Kurdish new year, and in many cases denied Syrian nationality altogether.

The political future of Rojava is now uncertain. Earlier this year, forces aligned with Syria’s new government attacked several cities in the region, and Kurdish militias withdrew from large swathes of territory. On 30 January, Kurdish forces announced an agreement with Damascus including a ceasefire, gradual integration of regional civil and military institutions into the Syrian state, and respect for the “civil and educational rights of the Kurdish people”.

In the Islamic Republic of Iran, Kurdish language and culture remain tightly restricted. Massoud Sharifi, a sociology professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona who grew up in Rojhilat near the Iranian-Iraqi-Turkish border, explains: “Persian and Kurdish are from the same language family, and many Iranians see Kurds as an ancient Iranian people. But they refuse to recognise Kurdish as a language – they treat it as a dialect and believe it should not have official status.”

According to Sharifi, Iranian nationalism “views multilingualism as a threat to territorial integrity. Granting space to Kurdish cultural and linguistic expression is seen as risking the country’s division.”

Kurdish is not taught in schools and has no official standing. Limited openings have appeared and disappeared. “In the 1990s, some publications in Kurdish were allowed, but very briefly. A new magazine would appear, publish two issues, and by the third it would be banned. There are informal literary associations that meet clandestinely, and one university offers Kurdish literature. There’s also some local Kurdish-language television, but the staff and content are tightly controlled by the state,” Sharifi says. Books smuggled from Başûr circulated in border areas. “That’s how I learned to read and write Kurdish – in secret.”

Criminalisation in Bakur

Today, many argue that the harshest conditions for Kurds persist in Turkey’s southeast. Since the foundation of the Turkish Republic in 1923, the state has repeatedly denied the existence of the Kurdish people – who number around 20 million in Turkey – banned the Kurdish language, and for decades persecuted, imprisoned and tortured people for speaking it.

“Simply being yourself – speaking your language, celebrating a festival, even whistling a Kurdish song – could be enough to face repression,” says Xezal, from Amed, who has lived in exile in Catalonia since 2019 and uses a pseudonym for security reasons. “My father spent years in prison and was tortured. The rest of our family has always had problems with the Turkish state.”

Kurdish still lacks official recognition and remains excluded from public education, aside from limited elective options. Kurdish political and cultural expression is subject to ongoing restrictions, and pro-Kurdish parties have been outlawed or prosecuted over the decades.

The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), deemed illegal and terrorist by Ankara, waged an armed insurgency for decades. In 2025, its imprisoned leader, Abdullah Öcalan – held in Turkey since 1999 – announced the group’s dissolution, opening the door to a renewed peace and negotiation process.

Another Kurdish activist in Barcelona, Nupelda (also a pseudonym), describes discrimination as pervasive. “At school, you were humiliated and even beaten for speaking Kurdish or for not speaking Turkish properly. If I went to hospital with my grandmother, who doesn’t speak Turkish, they would shout at her and treat her badly. Even my mother, who speaks Turkish with a Kurdish accent, faced abuse. We had to accompany her everywhere to deal with paperwork. If you don’t speak Turkish well, you can’t solve daily problems.”

She adds: “A Kurdish person who openly speaks their language or defends their rights will never be hired in the public sector and will struggle to find a good job.” Two years ago, Turkish authorities detained around 50 people on charges of “terrorist propaganda” for dancing or singing Kurdish songs at weddings.

Cracks in the system

Education has been a central battleground. “I started school without knowing Turkish. Classmates and teachers shouted at me, called me stupid and beat me,” Nupelda recalls. “If you’re Kurdish and live in cities like Istanbul or Ankara, bullying is common.”

Discrimination extends to university. “A professor once told me Kurds were terrorists who wanted to break up the country. I needed his approval for a project interview – nothing to do with culture or politics – but he humiliated me and excluded me. If you want to advance, you’re forced to deny your identity.”

Yet, in the past decade, small openings have emerged. In 2012, Kurdish was introduced as an elective in public schools under the “Living Languages and Dialects” programme, typically two hours a week. Implementation has been patchy. Fourteen years later, only a few thousand students can attend, due to a shortage of qualified teachers and persistent political and social pressure. Nonetheless, in the 2025-26 academic year more than 60,000 students enrolled.

Between 2006 and 2011, amid tentative reforms, the Catalan organisation CIEMEN and the Kurdish association Kurdi-Der collaborated on an international cooperation project to train 500 Kurdish-language teachers, addressing the shortage of educators and teaching materials.

Exile and the fear of losing a language

Compared with other migrant communities, the Kurdish population in Catalonia is small: between 350 and 400 people, according to diaspora sources. Around 250 live in Barcelona or its metropolitan area, with smaller groups in Manresa and Lleida. Most are from Bakur, though some hail from Rojava and Rojhilat.

Given decades of persecution and forced assimilation – particularly in Turkey – many Kurds have lost their language, or stopped passing it on out of fear.

Jenkidar Shikhdmmar, a Kurd from Rojava and Spain’s representative of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, says this is one of his deepest concerns. “I was imprisoned and tortured simply for speaking Kurdish, and my father nearly lost his life defending the language in Syria. So I don’t understand why, in Catalonia, where there is no repression, we should still hide it. But some people are still afraid. I feel ashamed speaking Turkish or Arabic to another Kurd here. From the diaspora, one of our most important tasks is to teach Kurdish to those who’ve lost it and to the next generation.”

Building community to reclaim a language

Though small and dispersed, the Kurdish diaspora in Catalonia has begun organising in recent years. A WhatsApp group shares information, supports newcomers and exchanges job leads and bureaucratic advice.

They have also founded a new cultural association in Barcelona called Berfin, named after a flower that blooms through the snow on Kurdish mountain peaks.

One of Berfin’s aims is to promote Kurdish-language teaching in Catalonia, especially for diaspora families whose children may not speak it. “In countries like Sweden or Germany, where the Kurdish diaspora has been established for more than 40 years, there are courses and teaching materials for Kurdish families,” says Sharifi. “Here, because the community is so small, there’s a lack of public policy from Catalan institutions to support such programmes.”

Culture and music will be central pillars. The association plans a music festival and activities to celebrate Newroz on 21 March, as well as traditional dance classes and workshops to learn the tanbur, a long-necked string instrument native to Kurdistan with roots stretching back more than 4,000 years to Mesopotamia.

Berfin’s main medium-term challenge is securing a permanent venue. The group has applied to Barcelona city council for premises and currently uses rooms at CIEMEN’s headquarters for meetings and Kurdish classes, held every Tuesday and Thursday since February.

From political solidarity to cultural affiliation

Links between Catalonia and Kurdistan date back decades. Since the 1980s, organisations such as CIEMEN and the Catalan-Kurdish Friendship Committee have worked to raise awareness of the Kurdish cause and connect Catalans with the Kurdish political project and expatriate community.

Some Catalans have been drawn to Kurdistan through the political experiment in Rojava. The journalist and documentary-maker Ferran Domènech spent two years there. “I decided to learn the language to truly understand the culture and people, since almost no one spoke English. If you go with an internationalist perspective, learning Kurdish is fundamental,” he says.

For Mukaddes Akin, political engagement can be a gateway to language – but it should not be the only lens. “It’s reductive if people only think of Kurds in terms of the YPG or armed struggle. It would be wonderful to see more expressions of Kurdish language and culture from exile – music festivals with bands from Kurdistan, translations of literature into Kurdish, sharing our cuisine. Little by little, I believe we’ll see that change.”

https://www.nationalia.info/new/11746/the-kurdish-diaspora-mobilises-to-revive-its-language