|
Opened with a flourish, Turkey's
Kurdish-language schools fold
5.10.2005
By Yigal Schleifer
|
|
|
|
The EU-prodded reform allowed private classes.
But public-school instruction is still banned.
BATMAN, TURKEY - For years, Kurdish language
instructor Aydin Unesi had to teach clandestinely
throughout this city in Turkey's southeast region,
home to the majority of the country's 14 million
Kurds. But on April 1, 2004, he found himself
presiding over the much-heralded opening of the
first official private Kurdish language school here.
"We felt this was the moment, after 80 years of
being prohibited, for this language to be
permitted," Mr. Unesi says.
The euphoria did not last long. Although the school
had a capacity of 480 students for each of its
10-week sessions, it enrolled only a fraction of
that number. And earlier this month, it closed with
little fanfare, along with seven other Kurdish
courses in Istanbul and southeast Turkey. |
Former school director Suleyman Yilmaz says that
private courses alone won't keep Kurdish alive. "We
fell for the government's trick."
YIGAL SCHLEIFER
Photo: csmonitor |
For the government, which allowed the schools to
open as part of a wave of European Union-prodded
reforms instituted to strengthen the country's
candidacy for membership - under discussion this
week in Brussels - the closings are proof that
Turkey's Kurds are not really interested in learning
their language.
Kurdish language activists counter that the desire
to learn Kurdish is there, but it must be taught in
public schools - a practice that's still banned.
It's a debate that dramatizes Turkey's struggle to
defuse tensions with the Kurdish community.
Beyond the now-closed private courses, there is
still precious little space in Turkish public life
for Kurdish. There are currently no private
television or radio stations that are allowed to
broadcast in the language, and Turkey's national
television has programming in Kurdish for just 30
minutes each week. The language, meanwhile, is still
banned for official uses.
"If you learn a second language, like French, it
should lead to some benefit, but there's nothing
like that with Kurdish," says Suleyman Yilmaz,
director of the language school in Diyarbakir,
another city in the southeast, where a four-story
building painted pink and beige was rented out and
renovated in anticipation of a flood of students
that never came.
Still, in Diyarbakir and other places in the region,
there is strong evidence of a thirst for Kurdish
culture and language. In the Asanlar music shop in
Diyarbakir, the racks are stocked floor-to-ceiling
with Kurdish-language tapes and CDs, banned only a
few years ago. Mustafa Orhanciftci, the store's
owner, says 70 percent of the music he sells is in
Kurdish. He also doing brisk business selling
Kurdish-language movies, most of them low-budget
productions recently made by local amateurs. "People
want these movies in their language," he says.
Unesi says Kurds simply couldn't afford the money or
time needed to take private instruction. "It would
be better to teach Kurdish in schools." he says.
"It's better to study when you're a child."
A coalition of Kurdish grass-roots organizations has
already begun a campaign called "I want to be taught
in my mother tongue," aimed at pressuring the
Turkish government to institute Kurdish language
education in public schools. The campaign's
organizers say they have already collected more than
300,000 signatures.
Such an initiative has little chance of success, at
least without strong pressure from the EU, says
Etyen Mahcupyan, director of the Democratization
Project at the Turkish Economic and Social Studies
Foundation (TESEV), an Istanbul-based think tank.
Modern Turkey, built on the remains of the polyglot
and multicultural Ottoman Empire, has long looked at
the Turkish language as one of the keys to unifying
the nation. "I don't think the officials will take
it seriously. It is too political," he says.
For now, the issue of Kurdish language education
seems to be back at square one, with neither private
nor public courses offered.
"We fell for the government's trick," says Mr.
Yilmaz, director of the closed Diyarbakir school.
"As the director of this school, I'm telling you
that this language will never survive only on
courses like this."
www.csmonitor.com
Top |
Kurd Net
does not take credit for and is not responsible for the content of news
information on this page
|
® 