Human Rights Victory For Kurds 

Jon Gorvett 

The Times Educational Supplement 

Aug. 9, 2002 

International; No.4483

10 

In a landmark decision, Turkey's parliament voted last 

Friday to legalise teaching of the Kurdish language. Human 

rights activists hope this may pave the way to full mother-

tongue education for the country's 12 million ethnic Kurds. 

After a rowdy all-night session of parliament, all parties 

voted in favour except the largest -the rightist National 

Action Party. They condemned those supporting the change as 

"traitors". 

The new law will allow Turkey's 375 private language 

schools to offer Kurdish along with English and other 

tongues. 

"This is positive," said Hasan Kaya of Istanbul's Kurdish 

Education and Culture Institute. "Until now even the 

existence of the Kurdish language was being denied." But, 

while welcoming the change, Kurdish groups want the 

government to go further and allow Kurdish-medium state 

schools. 

Kurdish was outlawed in Turkey following the 1980 military 

coup.Its leaders denied that people such as Kurds even 

existed. Despite the fact that Turkish and Kurdish are very 

different -the former is a Ural-Asiatic tongue, the latter 

Indo-European -as late as last year prime minister Bulent 

Ecevit felt able to declare that there was "no such thing" 

as a Kurdish language. 

The new move comes alongside a package of measures designed 

to bring Turkey into harmony with the European Union, which 

it badly wants to join. It also comes at the effective end 

of a 17-year conflict between Kurdish guerrillas and the 

Turkish army, in which more than 35,000 people have died.  

Many pupils and parents began protests against the ban on 

Kurdish education at the end of last year. Some are still 

in prison.