Once a beacon of hope in Turkey, Kurdish school shut down

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey: When it opened three years ago in Turkey’s biggest Kurdishmajority city, it was a symbol of Ankara’s changing – and more liberal – attitudes toward Kurdishlanguage education.

The school in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir was one of five primary schools since 2013 that offered a fully Kurdish-language education.

From 2014 onwards, it was also the first school in Turkey to give parents their children’s report cards in the Kurdish language.

But that has now come to an end after it became the first Kurdish school to be closed down in October by the governor. All five such schools in the southeast have now been shut.

Some 238 students aged between five and 11 have been left without a school place in the new academic year. The move comes after a fragile ceasefire collapsed last year with Kurdish militants waging an insurgency inside Turkey and a crackdown since the July 15 failed coup on those suspected of links to rebels.

Parents and teachers only discovered the school had been shut down when a seal was placed on the door by police saying it was closed due to violations of Turkish laws.

But the school’s defenders say it was always acting outside of the law against offering a fully Kurdish language education but with the state’s knowledge and tacit approval.

Kurdish language education had been forbidden under the Turkish constitution, which states: “No language other than Turkish shall be taught as a mother tongue to Turkish citizens at any institution of education.”

Some Turkish officials also feared the use of the Kurdish language would divide the country along ethnic lines. — AFP