|
Istanbul, 22 July (AKI) - Barely one year after
its inauguration, Turkey's first centre offering
Kurdish language lessons, has closed its doors due
to a lack of students. The privately-run centre in
the mostly Kurdish southeastern city of Batman, was
unveiled amid much fanfare in April 2004, with some
30,000 people attending the opening ceremony. But
with only 62 students attending lessons in the
480-student capacity centre, the director, Aydin
Unesi has decided that he cannot afford to continue.
He was the first person to apply for a licence to
run a Kurdish language course in Turkey following
the lifting of state restrictions.
Turkey allowed opening private courses in minority
languages in 2002, following changes to the
constitution including the introduction of laws
aimed at "harmonizing" legal conditions in the
country in line with European Union standards.
Then in a taboo-breaking move last year, the Turkish
parliament gave the go-ahead for private
institutions to teach the Kurdish language widely
spoken by the country's Kurdish minority who make up
11 percent of the population of 71 million.
The decision to allow Kurdish language courses was
strongly opposed by Turkish nationalist groups as
well as many state officials who argued that the
move would boost demands by Kurdish separatists,
some of whom have waged a decades-long violent
campaign against Ankara - for their own independent
state. Over 30,000 people have died in fighting
between the Kurdish Workers' Party, the PKK, and
Turkish authorities in the last 20 years.
In contrast, others have argued that by allowing
Kurdish language courses to be taught, the state has
ensured that the issue is no longer a "forbidden
fruit" and a rallying point for separatists.
Still, Unesi says that he had to overcome a series
of bureaucratic hurdles apparently aimed at
discouraging him from opening the centre.
Some of the barriers he faced included to-the-letter
application of building standard requirements
ranging from the correct number of fire exits to the
more frustratingly petty, but more time consuming
debate on the width of the doors.
The centre's six classrooms were fitted with 85
centimetre-wide doors, but state building inspectors
demanded that they be changed to the required 90
centimetres wide and after much wrangling Unesi
broadened the doors by an extra 10 centimetres.
Another sticking point was the course's name which
Unesi had to change to 'Private Batman Kurdish
Course' following the authorities' objection to the
original '‘Private Batman Kurdish Language and
Dialects Course’.
Besides Unesi's centre in Batman, other private
schools started Kurdish language courses in the
cities of Diyarbakir, Van, Adana and in Istanbul,
but the one in Van is also facing closure after it
too reportedly hit financial problems.
www.adnki.com
Top |
® 