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ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Kurdish political parties, institutions and academics are calling on young students from the ethnic group in Turkey to register for elective lessons in their mother tongue, as the deadline for the conditional opening of Kurdish classes approaches.
Turkey’s Kurds are allowed to study in their mother tongue at school for a couple of hours a week through elective courses which can only be opened when at least ten students register for. Lessons are provided in both dialects of Kurdish language: Kurmanji and Zazaki. The deadline for registration is January 21.
Kurdish political parties, language promotion institutions and academics as well as social media users have recently campaigned for elective lessons in Kurdish in Turkey through media outlets, social media platforms and brochures. The hashtag #KurdîHilbijêre (select Kurdish) has been trending on Twitter for days.
The lessons are only offered to students in the fifth to eighth grades. The process is not new but many Kurdish students have avoided such classes in the past on the grounds that they are not graded for the final results. Only the parents of the students can register their children to these classes.
Kurdish language has been silenced in modern Turkey since its foundation in 1923, due to the oppressive assimilation policies of successive governments and Kurdish parties. A 2019 study shows that only a small size of Turkey’s Kurdish population can speak their mother tongue.
“We have called for Kurdish education but it has not been accepted in Turkey. However, there is another chance - elective courses. We know that the elective courses are not sufficient to learn Kurdish language but it is a chance,” Ebru Gunay, spokesperson for the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), said in a press conference on Thursday.
Kurdish Language Movement (HEZKURD) has been intensely campaigning for the elective lessons, with its members handing out brochures to students to encourage them to register for the Kurdish lessons.
Turkey’s Kurds have made several attempts to push Ankara to recognize Kurdish as an official language but they were fruitless.
The restriction of the language was eased during the peace process between the government and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in 2013. However, when the process ended in 2015, things reversed.
Kurmanji and Zazaki are listed under the Living Languages and Dialects category by Turkey’s education ministry.
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