Kurdish-Canadians Face Constraints of a Different Kind in Ad

[Aslan]

MONTREAL, Canada – Huseyin Solak still remembers his boyhood in Turkey, where every morning he and his classmates would have to declare, “I am proud to be a Turk.” He remembers being punished for speaking in Kurdish, his mother tongue.

Now, after 22 years in Canada and free to live as he pleases, Solak finds that he and thousands like him who would like to build a thriving Kurdish community in their adopted homeland, there are new constraints: Work and time.

“We are working a lot,” he says. “We are hard-working people, and it is not easy to come together,” he adds, explaining that for several thousand Kurds living in the Francophone province of Quebec as owners of businesses, restaurants and auto-repair shops, life is just too busy.

Growing up in a small village in the rugged mountains of southeastern Turkey, Solak says he was not allowed to speak his mother tongue in Turkey, and often had to lie about his true identity.

“I am proud to be a Turk,” he would have to vow every morning at school, together with other schoolmates, although that is not what he felt in his heart.

“Life becomes a lie,” says Solak. “To survive, Kurds living in Turkey needed to deny their identity, language and culture.”

He recalls a day when his teacher punished him for speaking Kurdish with his aunt at the convenience store she owned.

But since arriving in Canada in 1991, when he was 26, Solak has been trying to compensate for the freedom denied to him in Turkey.

“We continue living our culture here. It’s easier here,” he says. “There, people are scared to say they are Kurds. Here we can live our Kurdish culture.”

Solak says that Kurds in Montreal have to be more visible and make themselves known in the multicultural city.

“Canadians do not know much about Kurds and don’t understand us,” he admits. But, he says, “Kurds came here for a better life and so there is no time for social activities. We have our hearts together, but time is always missing,” he adds.

Solak is happy about choosing Canada as his new home, but laments that he and his children may never see their ancestral village again.

“I always say I did the right thing to leave,” he says. “But this is so sad now; there is no one there in my village.”

In 1978, the Turkish army destroyed his village. “Stealing from someone to give to someone else because they are strong and have guns is very sad,” he says.

Observing the peaceful co-existence between French- and English-speaking Canadians, Solak believes that Kurds and other nations can live together too. “Living together is possible,” he says.

Supporting integration with Canada but seeing assimilation as “very dangerous,” Solak campaigned and succeeded in establishing a Montreal Kurdish Community Center in 2011.

The two-story building is funded by Kurdish businessmen in Montreal and is run by community volunteers.

The building will soon have a Kurdish restaurant, a venue for meetings and hosting Kurdish events, as well as funeral services.

“One day people in the world will notice that Kurds have their own culture and language,” he says.

Solak hopes that the community center will become a place where Kurdish children can learn their heritage from their elders.

“The new generation is pushing me to do more,” he says. “One day I will hand them this key to continue.”

[Anthea]

I wonder does Huseyin Solak speak Kurdish and listen to Kurdish music - or is he the same as the Kurds in England who come from Turkey and rather than say "Free at last now I can speak Kurdish and teach my children Kurdish" only speak TURKISH and make sure that their children only speak TURKISH