Turkey recently authorized Kurdish classes in public schools, bringing a long-banned language under the official umbrella. Under the new policy, students will have the opportunity to take Kurdish as an elective if there is enough demand.
Just 30 years ago, describing oneself as Kurdish was an offense incurring jail time. A case in point is Şerafettin Elçi, whose famous utterance “There are Kurds in Turkey, and I am a Kurd as well” earned him a felony charge.
But times have changed, and Turkey is attempting to shed its human rights baggage as it vies for a seat in the European Union. The Kurdish question is perhaps the most vocal skeleton in the closet of the otherwise successfully modernizing country.
By all measures, the government has historically enforced its one-language policy with fervor. In rural provinces where some children only understand Kurdish, schools still must teach exclusively in Turkish. This is despite the fact that Kurds, whose separatist movement has drawn fire since the 1980s, make up almost a fifth of the national population.
As a result, some Kurds just aren’t buying the sudden change in official heart. As the Iraqi Kurdish newspaper Rudaw opines, “Offering Kurdish as a ‘foreign language’ to people whose mother tongue it is ‘amounts to oppression.’” It seems like Turkey will have to go farther faster if it wants to make peace with its largest group of minority language speakers.
Creative Commons Love: Kurdistan Photo كوردستان on Flickr.com
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