JINHA

NEWS CENTER – As the new school year began in Turkey today, families across Northern Kurdistan (in Turkey) joined a school boycott to demand the right to education in their native languages.

Many schools were empty today on the first day of Turkey’s new school year, as families joined a boycott calling for the right to native language education. Turkish law forbids students from receiving public education in Kurdish and many of the other languages spoken in Turkey. This year, the Kurdish movement group Democratic Society Congress (DTK) called a one-week school boycott starting today to demand native language education.

In the province of Diyarbakır, many primary and middle schools were empty, especially in the Bağlar district of the provincial capital and main Kurdish city of Diyarbakır. Schools were closed across the Silvan district of the province, where children played ball in the playgrounds of the empty schools.

Participation in the boycott was also strong across the province of Şırnak, in the town of Nusaybin and in the town of Kızıltepe, where residents marched for the right to native language education. The majority of schools were empty in the city of Siirt. Students boycotting schools in the largely Alevi province of Dersim demanded native language education and an end to mandatory religious instruction (in which all students in public schools are forced to study Sunni Islam). Boycott participation was impressive in the province of Hakkari, where all 50 schools in the provincial capital were empty today. The nearby towns of Yüksekova and Şemdinli also had high attendance.

Classrooms were empty across the province of Van, where university students boycotted classes at Van’s Yüzüncü Yıl University in solidarity with the K-12 students. The city’s co-mayors were among the many activists who gathered at Feqiye Teyran Park to protest for the right to native language education. Ayten Salgür, a member of the activist group Peace Mothers Assemby, spoke in Kurdish about the changes she saw in her children since sending them to public school.

“I don’t know Turkish, and my child speaks to me in Turkish now, so we can’t understand one another anymore,” said Ayten. “There are millions of mothers like me. Native language education needs to begin immediately; these problems need to end.”

(va-mc/gc/cm)