DE GRUYTER MOUTON DOi lO.1515/iisl-2O12-OO53 ÍJSL2012; 217:151-180 Ergin Öpengin Sociolinguistic situation of Kurdish in Turkey: Sociopolitical factors and language use patterns Abstract: This article aims at exploring the minority status of Kurdish language in Turkey. It asks two main questions: (1) In what ways have state policies and socio- historical conditions influenced the evolution of linguistic behavior of Kurdish speakers? (2) What are the mechanisms through which language maintenance versus language shift tendencies operate in the speech community? The article discusses the objective dimensions of the language situation in the Kurdish re- gion of Turkey. It then presents an account of daily language practices and perceptions of Kurdish speakers. It shows that language use and choice are sig- nificantly related to variables such as age, gender, education level, rural versus urban dwelling and the overall socio-cultural and political contexts of such uses and choices. The article further indicates that although the general tendency is to follow the functional separation of languages, the language situation in this con- text is not an example of stable diglossia, as Turkish exerts its increasing pres- ence in low domains whereas Kurdish, by contrast, has started to infringe into high domains like media and institutions. The article concludes that the preva- lent community bilingualism evolves to the detriment of Kurdish, leading to a shift-oriented linguistic situation for Kurdish. Keywords: Kurdish; Turkey; diglossia; language maintenance; language shift Ergin öpengin: Lacito CNRS, Université Paris III & Bamberg University. E-mail: ergin.opengln@etud.sorbonne-nouvelle.fr 1 Introduction Kurdish in Turkey is the language of a large population of about 15-20 million speakers. Yet, it has rarely been the subject of formal sociolinguistic description. The existing literature (Hassanpour 1992; Akin 1995; Haig 2004; Skutnabb- Kangas and Fernandes 2008; Coçkun et al. 2011) has discussed in detail the modality of restrictions on the private and public usage of Kurdish in Turkey,