What went wrong? Denying Kurds education in their mother tongue!

Shivan Fazil

By Shivan Fazil:

I have followed Mustafa Akyol’s columns and reflections on Kurds, religion and the so-called Turkish opening since early 2011. Mustafa Akyol is a Turkish writer and journalist who wrote a thesis entitled, Rethinking the Kurdish Question: What Went Wrong, What Next?

His articles are mostly friendly to the incumbent Justice and Development Party (AKP), and I sometimes find his pieces interesting. Recently he has written on the hunger strikes and Kurdish rights, reflecting on the three major demands of the hunger strikers: the right to legal defence in Kurdish; the right to education in Kurdish; and improved prison conditions for the PKK leader. I will here focus on the second demand.

Unfortunately, Mr Akyol does not believe that the Turkish government should provide education in every mother tongue. Rather – comparing education in Turkey to the USA – he suggests that Kurdish education should only be allowed through private institutions, similar to the USA where public schools operate in English, but education in other languages is available in private schools.

Alas, through this suggestion, he ignores the fact that the Kurds are the second biggest ethnicity in Turkey, accounting for more than 20% of the total population. In fact, a detailed breakdown of the population reveals that millions of Kurdish kids are denied access to education in their Kurdish mother tongue.

He dismisses the basic right of a fifth of the population. Such suggestions leave no room for “rethinking the Kurdish question”.

In fact, referring back to Mr Aykol’s thesis, denying Kurds the right to free education in their mother tongue is one of the very crucial aspects that “went wrong”. In other words, what went wrong comes down to Turkey long denying the basic rights of the Kurds.

To anticipate “what is next”? The Kurdish question remains unresolved, which makes it senseless for Turkey to claim that there is “an opening” any longer.

Shivan Fazil lives in London.
Twitter:@ShivanFazil
Facebook: ShivanFazilSabr

Copyright © 2012 Kurdistantribune.com

5 Responses to What went wrong? Denying Kurds education in their mother tongue!
  1. Suleiman
    December 6, 2012 | 18:35

    In the United States Hispanics make up about 25% of the population if not more, yet education is all in English. Can we stop this nonsense and focus on actually building Kutdistan.

    • Sofia Barbarani
      December 8, 2012 | 17:34

      Suleiman, given that education and identity is the basis of state-building, I think that it is an extremely important (if not interesting) topic that should be discussed. Spanish-speaking citizens in the US is a completely different story to the Kurds of Iraq. One is an immigrant community, the other is native to the land.

      • Helin
        August 11, 2015 | 17:28

        One is an immigrant community, the other is native to the land.
        what do u mean? Mexico city was part of Mexico until US forcefully annexed.

  2. haval
    December 6, 2012 | 18:54

    Well done and well prepared peice of work

  3. Kawa Sabah
    December 15, 2012 | 11:28

    This theory of Akyols is yet another pretext for racism. He thinks that he has come up with an unprecedented idea, but in fact his so called theories has far more severe failures than support. Utterly useless and extremist gibbering

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