MED-DER will be offering many activities related to Kurdish Language Day, including four weeks free ‘Kurdish alphabet’, ‘Kurdish literature’ and ‘reading and writing” lessons to participants of the festival.
Elmas explained the importance of Kurdish Language Day: ”Language is also the sign of the development of a nation. We are planning to discuss the relationship between the nation, society and women’s language as part of the festival. We need to discuss all these topics”, she said.
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, they plan to organize some of their events and workshops as online events. They will be published from MED-DER’s social media accounts.
Women’s role in the teaching of the Kurdish language
Co-Chair Şilan Elmas pointed out they are also collecting video messages from 5,000 Kurdish women for the Festival “since Kurdish women have been playing a leading role in the teaching of the language to other generations. Therefore, we especially have focused on women in the Festival’s programme”, she explained.
”As women, we say that we will write our stories and history in our own language. Therefore, we organised this year’s Language Festival with women-oriented activities. We will carry out activities from the four parts of Kurdistan to all over Europe”, she pointed out.
The campaign to make Kurdish an official language of education
Elmas emphasized that they are still working on the campaign to make Kurdish an official language of education in Turkey. ”Commissions have been established for this campaign in each city. This campaign was a very important step. We are a part of it and trying to spread it too”.
