A prison in Turkey’s Şırnak province has imposed a ban on the use of the Kurdish language in telephone conversations between inmates and their families, news website TR724 reported on Monday.

According to Fadıl Tay, a lawyer with the Human Rights Commission of the Şırnak Bar Association, the new prison director told inmates that they were not allowed to speak to their families in Kurdish during telephone conversations.

Tay said the restriction was a clear violation of prisoners’ rights and called it unconstitutional.

“This ban reminds us of the repressive measures of the 1990s, when prisoners were only allowed to ‘speak Turkish,'” he said. “This is simply a continuation of those repressive measures.”

The ban on the Kurdish language is reportedly part of a larger pattern of increasing human rights abuses in the prison. The restrictions extend beyond language use. For example, prisoners are prohibited from hugging family members during open visits, and legal representatives are barred from bringing pens and documents into the facility.

The Şırnak Bar Association announced that it would conduct a thorough investigation on August 13 to document these violations and take appropriate legal action.

Kurds in Turkey are often pressured not to speak their native language. Authorities often claim that people who speak Kurdish are chanting slogans in support of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has led an armed insurgency against Turkish security forces since the 1980s, killing around 40,000 people.

The use of the Kurdish language has been banned in Turkey for many years. Kurdish language, clothing, folklore and names were banned in 1937. The words “Kurds”, “Kurdistan” and “Kurdish” were among the officially banned words. After a military coup in 1980, even speaking Kurdish in private life was officially banned.

The visibility of Kurdish on television and in the print media only became possible in the early 2000s thanks to the country’s significant progress in its efforts to become a member of the EU.

Nevertheless, the nationalist tendency and the alliance of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) with the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) have led to an increase in racist attacks against Kurds over the past decade.