Only 10 new appointments have been made for teachers of Kurdish and Zazaki, out of 20,000 new teacher appointments recently announced by the Turkish Minister of National Education Yusuf Tekin.
Kurdish, which is the second most commonly spoken language in Turkey, was allocated less teachers than English, German, Russian and Arabic. For comparison, Kurdish was allocated just 10 teaching quotas, while English was allocated almost a thousand.
Meanwhile in Diyarbakır’s (Amed) Sur district, a Kurdish language festival is underway, as preparations commence for this year’s Kurdish Language Day on 15 May. Repression of the Kurdish language and others has been a policy in Turkey since the establishment of the Republic of Turkey in 1923. As part of the celebration of Kurdish Language Day last year, Dilan Güvenç, of Mesopotamia Language, Culture and Research Association (MED-DER) said: “Language is the foundation of all nations and a crucial factor in the survival and identity of minority groups, particularly for the Kurds”.
The 15 May has been commemorated as Kurdish Language Day since 2006. The date recalls the first publication of the Kurdish language magazine Hawar in 1932. Hawar is considered to have played an important role in the history of the struggle for the Kurdish language.
The lack of a sufficient quota for Kurdish teachers is affecting the number of people who enter the profession. Data provided by the Ministry of National Education shows that only 189 teachers have been appointed over the last decade. Kurdish language associations point that the number of teachers who are still working in education is even lower.
Tekin’s decision has come under heavy criticism. Şerefxan Cizîrî, the spokesperson of the Kurdish Language Platform said, “Even proportionally, it is ridiculous and insufficient”. Serhat Kılıç, co-chair of a branch of the Eğitim-Sen pro-liberties education union told Turkish journalists, “This is an expression of the approach towards Kurdish language”.
Kurdish has been taught in Turkish schools as an optional subject since 2012. The move was made by the Turkish state because of Turkey’s accession bid to join the EU, which has since been shelved over human rights concerns.
Education authorities reportedly use underhand means to prevent students from studying the language. Turkish news website Evrensel reported that schools prevented students from studying Kurdish, making excuses that there were ‘not enough teachers’, ‘not enough classrooms’ or ‘not enough demand’ from students. Private lessons were often stopped under different pretexts.
Kılıç told Evrensel that state policy had created a vicious circle which limited the number of students studying Kurdish. He said: “At the course selection stage, course selection is prevented because there are no teachers. During the teacher assignment process, teacher assignment is prevented because there are not enough applicants. There is a restriction on the appointment of Kurdish teachers. As a result of this vicious circle, this two-way relationship, the choice of Kurdish language and the necessary appointment are somehow prevented. There are currently thousands of Kurdish teachers waiting to be appointed. There are thousands of children who would choose this subject if enough teachers were appointed.”
The Turkish government’s own data shows that 23,000 students applied for Kurdish classes last year. Cizîrî pointed out that these figures showed that the 10 appointments for Kurdish language teachers were woefully insufficient. He argued that the government was displaying a “lack of seriousness” in its commitment to teaching the Kurdish Language.
Cizîrî continued: “Kurdish should be the language of education, the state should be prepared for this. If they were serious and sincere, the approach to Kurdish would be very different. If you want to make peace with the Kurds, first make peace with their language. First fulfil their language rights.”
Gülcan Kaçmaz Sayyiğit, a member of the Free Women’s Association (TJA) and the Peoples’ Equality and Democracy (DEM) Party representative for Van (Wan), complained that the Turkish state had deemed the Kurdish language an ‘optional’ subject, and allocated less teachers to teach Kurmanci and Zazaki as a result. She posted on social media platform X: “It is extremely cunning to make the mother tongue of millions of people optional”, she said, adding, “our demand is for education in the mother tongue and for the Kurdish language to have status.”
