Talin Ahmad, a five-year-old, has come with her father to enrol in a Turkmen school in Erbil. She will be one of the 3,000 Turkmen students in the Kurdistan Region who will study in their mother tongue for the 2023-2024 academic year.
The new school year in the Kurdistan Region began on Wednesday.
“She had a strong interest in learning Turkish and regularly watched Turkish cartoons. As my mother and I are both Turkmen, we supported her and we chose to bring my daughter here,” said Ahmed Abdulqadir, Talin’s father.
The first Turkmen school in Erbil was established 30 years ago. Just like other schools in the Kurdistan Region, the educational process in Turkmen schools will start on the 13th of September.
“When a child wakes up in the morning and uses whatever language their family uses for communication at home, they find it easier to study in," Safin Mohammed, Principal of Dogus Primary School in Erbil, told Rudaw.
He went on to detail that: "It does not make sense for a child to speak Turkish at home, but study in Kurdish or Arabic at school. It makes it easier for them to study in their mother tongue to learn letters, words, and expressions, resulting in better comprehension and learning."
There are 19 Turkmen language schools in the Kurdistan Region, 15 of which are in Erbil, three in Kifri, and one in Sulaimani.
The head of the Turkmen studying programs at the KRG education ministry explained that their Turkmen schools have seen massive interest and progress by children coming from Turkmen families.
“The same Kurdish curriculum is translated into Turkish and Syriac," said Sabah Salih, Director General of Turkmen Education in the Kurdistan Region. "The same subject is taught, in addition to a Turkish grammar lesson."
"Our schools are constantly improving day by day. We hope that there will be more schools and more attention will be paid to the mother tongues in the Kurdistan Region," he added.
In the Kurdistan Region, Turkmen, Syriac, and Armenian languages are officially recognized and the right to teach and use these languages is guaranteed.
