Turkey's endangered "bird language" enters UNESCO list

Mobile phones and out-migration are among major factors that have lead to 'bird language' and its culture's decline

ANKARA: The unusual and very efficient whistle language used as a means of communication by villagers in the remote and mountainous northern Turkey has recently entered the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) list of Intangible Cultural Heritage but could soon be overtaken by modern technology.

The United Nations Cultural Agency has accepted the "bird language" of Black Sea villagers as an endangered part of world heritage in need of urgent protection.

Around 10,000 people, mostly in the district of Canakci in Giresun province, still use the language today, which is a highly-developed and high-pitched system of whistling among each other to communicate in the rugged terrain where mostly they cannot see each other.



This form of communication which dates some 500 years ago, during the Ottoman Empire, was widespread across the Black Sea regions, but 50 years ago it suffered the impact of the progression of technology and nowadays the ever rapid growing of cellular mobile systems has put this cultural heritage under serious threat.

In the days before mobile phones, these high-pitched noises allowed people to communicate across great distances, with their whistles winging through the air, connecting one remote house on the steep terrain with the next.

But as technology has made its way across the region, smatterings of bird language have been replaced by much more private text messages.

For centuries, the language has been passed on from grandparent to parent, from parent to child. Now, though, many of its most proficient speakers who use their tongue, teeth and fingers, are aging and becoming physically weak.



Young people are no longer interested in either learning the language, or in finding ways to update its vocabulary with new words, and in a few generations it may be gone.

"The mobile phones have had a certain impact on our whistle tradition here, but we are trying to keep our culture alive," said the Muhtar, the elected headman of Kuskoy (literally translated as "bird village"), Avni Kocek, in a telephone interview.

This village of some 400 souls where tea and hazelnuts are cultivated is located in the heart of the "whistle country" and more than 80 percent of its inhabitants practice this incredible method of communication, according to Kocek, who insisted that they are "proud of it."



"We are very satisfied that our bird language is now a part of the world culture heritage. It was a dream come true because we think that it will also inspire others," said Muhtar Kocek, who explained that Kuskoy is making efforts to keep the practice alive through its annual Bird Language Festival.

"Since 20 years ago we organize a festival in July in our village and it has become a real tourist attraction with hundreds of people attending from these parts and also from very different regions of Turkey," he said.

Seref Kocek, head of the local cultural association, said that the UNESCO's decision was some kind "of a recognition of our language in the world", adding that despite setbacks because of technology, "bird language is still used by many locals to communicate between each other and is the most practical way to do it instead of yelling across the valleys, which is bad for our throats."

But he also fears that the practice of youngsters using mobile phones to communicate, which is also a more discreet form between the opposite sexes, is a threat to this heritage which could eventually be extinct, if not protected.

District authorities have started teaching this language at primary school level since 2014 in order to instill the practice in the younger generations.

According to experts, whistle languages have existed throughout the ages across the world like in Spain's Canary Islands, in Mexico or in Greek villages, but the Turkish one seems to be the most high-pitched and lexical extended, with more than 400 words and phrases.



The "bird language" has a tone higher than other similar whistle languages, and it can travel greater distances, up to 5 km with its piercing tones. Hence this unusual form of communication was born from sheer necessity and transmitted from generation to generation.

"Whistle language is transmitted from our elders to us and we have the duty to transmit it to our children in the context of parent-child relations. It's a knowledge which is shared by a mother to her child," insisted Muhtar Kocek, who also learned this way 50 years ago.

"I am 50 years old and, if I remember correctly, I was five or so when I started to whistle," he said.

Turkish Culture Minister Numan Kurtulmus weighed in the safeguarding process of this language, calling on its users to keep the practice alive.

But technology is not the only threat to this unique language. In the past decades many young people have left Kuskoy as in other rural parts of Turkey, in search for better opportunities.

"One of the reasons we organize our annual Festival is to have these people back in their native land with friends or family, so we can all enjoy this heritage. Not only whistling but everything that binds us together," added organizer Seref Kocek.