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DIYARBAKIR, Turkey, Aug 1 (AFP) - 14h49 - Owners
of Kurdish language teaching centers in Turkey,
inaugurated recently with much fanfare thanks to
European Union-inspired reforms, announced Monday
they were closing because of a lack of interest
among Kurds.
"Despite all our efforts, we failed to make our
investments a focus of attraction for the people,"
said a joint statement by eight entrepreneurs read
out at a news conference by one of the owners,
Suleyman Yilmaz.
Turkey allowed private institutions to teach the
language of the sizeable Kurdish minority in 2002 as
part of reforms aimed at boosting its bid to join
the European Union.
Since then, seven language centers had opened,
mostly in the predominantly Kurdish southeast, and
one was in the process of completing bureaucratic
procedures before opening.
So far 2,027 people had enrolled in the courses, and
1,056 of them had completed the program.
Owners of the centers complained they faced
bureaucratic hurdles and that the government failed
to offer support.
They also realized that "nowhere in the world have a
people learned their mother tongue by paying money,"
Yilmaz said.
Morover, he said, "the Kurdish people already know
the language that we want to teach them and what
they want is... to be educated" in that language in
public schools and universities.
The language center owners would now support a
campaign by the Kurds to use their mother tongue in
public education, he said.
Under EU pressure, Turkey also launched
Kurdish-language broadcasts on public radio and
television in 2004. Although the language programs
were welcomed as a breakthrough in a country where
speaking Kurdish was banned less than 15 years ago,
they failed to attract a considerable audience
because of poor quality.
The reforms, however, helped Turkey win approval to
start accession talks with the EU on October 3.
Kurdish demands for broader freedoms come at a time
when the Kurdistan Workers' Party, blacklisted as a
terror group by the EU and the United States, has
stepped up violence in the southeast after calling a
five-year unilateral truce in June 2004 on grounds
that Ankara's reforms were inadequate.
AFP
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