The word Çingene (Gypsy) were identified falsely in all Turkish dictionaries (except one) published by various foundation in our country. Gypsies were identified as piker, rapacious, randy, cheeky in the dictionaries. Some adjectives like "covetous, dirty,shameless" were added to some of the dictionaries too as the identification of Gypsy.
Expressions related to Gypsies like "Çingene pembesi (Gypsy pink), Çingene parası (Gypsy money), Çingene düğünü (Gypsy wedding), Çingene kavgası (Gypsy fight), Çingenelik (Being Gypsy)..." were written with their explanation including a discriminative mentality full of prejudices in the dictionaries.
Aren't these explanations, identifications discriminative, exclusionist and humiliating? Don't they break social peace?
The word Çingene (Gypsy) is the name of an ethnic group, not an adjective. It's not true to accept it as an adjective, this creates trouble.
Turkish dictionaries published by National Education Ministry in 1985 and 1995 were prepared by a team including 18 writer and 4 supervisor. All of them were academicians. (However, there was humiliating expressions against Gypsies in the dictionaries they prepared.)
I wasn't able to change anything altough i tried to do something about the issue for long years. But i insisted. It was a nice coincidence that i met the minister of National Education Metin Bostancıoğlu. I explained him the issue and the problem is solved with his directive. The corrections needed maden in dictionaries by a team including me.
The corrections were sent to all foundations and universities with a ministry momerandum (01.10.2011) via YÖK (The Higher Education Council).
Similar humiliating expressions were written in the dictionaries of Turkish Linguistic Society. They were also prepared by a team including "academicians".
It's decided to correct the dictionaries of Turkish Linguistic Society with my efforts in a meeting i participated in 2004. Presidency of Turkish Linguistic Society declared corrections to ministries, related foundations and YÖK. They also announced corrections from their web page.
*Mustafa Aksu: Researcher and author
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