Deaf Turkish

Türkiye's Deaf community is a linguistic and cultural minority united by Turkish Sign Language (Türk İşaret Dili, TİD), a language unrelated to spoken Turkish, with subject-object-verb order and regional variation. It formed in schools for the deaf, beginning with the Yıldız deaf school in Istanbul in 1902 and a second school in Izmir; after the Ministry of Education banned signing in classrooms in 1953, children learned TİD from one another in dormitories and playgrounds, which produced strong regional and school dialects. The community crosses every ethnic line, Turkish, Kurdish, Arab, Circassian and refugee, and is enlarged in some regions by hereditary deafness linked to cousin marriage. Law 5378 (2005) recognised TİD, a 2006 regulation set up a TİD commission, and an online dictionary compiled from 116 native signers in 26 provinces appeared in 2017. Two small family or village sign languages also exist: Mardin Sign Language, nearly extinct, and Central Taurus Sign Language in three mountain villages.

Deaf life centres on the associations and sports clubs found in almost every province: 133 Deaf associations, 10 federations and a confederation counted 84,595 members in 2024, and the Türkiye Sağırlar Milli Federasyonu dates from 1960. Football, wrestling and handball clubs, theatre and film groups, cafes and weddings are where signing friends meet; Türkiye hosted the 2017 Deaflympics in Samsun. Many Deaf people marry other Deaf people they met at school. Turkish Sign Language Day is marked each 7 June. Most hearing families do not sign, so many deaf children grow up with little language until they reach a deaf school.

Most Deaf Turks are Muslims by family, Sunni or Alevi, and take part in Ramadan, the feasts, circumcision and funeral rites with their families, but sermons, Quran lessons and cemevi rituals are seldom interpreted, so understanding of the faith is often thin. A few mosques and the Presidency of Religious Affairs have offered sign-language sermons and Quran courses for the hearing-impaired in some provinces. Deaf people from Alevi families share the communal cem tradition with little access to its spoken content.

Joshua Project reports a Turkish Sign Language Bible translation started, but no Scripture, JESUS film or Bible-story set in TİD has been published, and no Deaf church or Deaf-led fellowship is known in Türkiye. Written Turkish Bibles are of limited use because many Deaf adults read Turkish poorly. Turkish Protestant churches rarely provide interpreters, and foreign Christian workers face entry bans, so reaching Deaf Turks depends on Deaf believers and signed resources in TİD.

Besides Turkish Sign Language, Türkiye has two small sign languages that grew up where hereditary deafness was common. Mardin Sign Language was used by about 40 members of the Dilsiz ('mute') family of Mardin over several generations; most deaf members have moved away and shifted to TİD, and it is nearly extinct. Central Taurus Sign Language arose from the 1960s in three neighbouring villages in a remote area of the south-central Taurus mountains, where about 25 deaf people and some 80 hearing relatives and neighbours sign it; the villages farm and herd, the area is Alevi, and most deaf adults never learned to read because the village school did not serve them. Young deaf villagers now attend deaf schools in Mersin or Adana and learn TİD, and elders fear it will replace their own language.