Esenyurt Students Choose Kurdish Class, Ministry Assigns No Teacher
RastinewsAt least a thousand students across five schools in Istanbul's Esenyurt district signed up for elective Kurdish classes this year. Not a single Kurdish teacher has been assigned to teach them.
Esenyurt, home to a large Kurdish population, saw strong demand for Kurmancî and Zazakî classes as Turkey's new school year opened. Classes have started, but the district still has no teacher qualified to lead them.
"Students who chose the class are left with no one"
Suphi Özgen, a lawyer and head of the Kurdish Language Movement Association (HezKurd), told Rûdaw that his organization met with the Esenyurt District Directorate of National Education and was promised a resolution.
Özgen said the classes exist as a legal right but go untaught in practice because of the teacher shortage.
"Because no Kurdish teachers have been assigned in Istanbul, these classes can't actually be held," he said. "Students who chose the class are left with no one to teach them."
Özgen said the association's demand to the ministry is straightforward: assign Kurdish teachers to schools immediately, in numbers matching student enrollment.
Parents: "Our language is our identity"
Istanbul is home to an estimated 5 million Kurds. Parents there are pushing for Kurdish-language instruction in schools so their children don't lose their mother tongue.
"We want our children to learn Kurdish in school, but without a teacher, that right is taken from us," said one parent, Zübeyde. Another parent, Ömer Güneş, said students have a basic right to be taught the class they chose.
"Everyone gets educated in their own language. We want to study in ours too," said 16-year-old Muhammed.
Şükrü Altun said his family speaks Kurdish at home, but argued the language needs to be taught formally in schools, and called on the state to make that possible. Seyid Abdullah said: "A person's language is their identity. Our language is Kurdish, and we will keep defending it."
Six slots for 86,000 students
According to Eğitim-Bir-Sen, 86,064 students chose elective Kurdish classes nationwide this school year.
Last year, the Ministry of National Education allocated just six teaching positions for Kurdish instructors. That number is expected to rise to 32 this year — still far short of the more than 86,000 students who want the class.
Kurdish-language organizations and families are calling for the bureaucratic obstacles around the elective class to be removed and for the right to mother-tongue education to be guaranteed in the constitution.
Elective Kurdish classes began in 2012
Elective Kurdish classes were added to the curriculum in the 2012-2013 school year under the heading "Living Languages and Dialects," covering Kurmancî and Zazakî.
Since then, Kurdish-language organizations have said the class has remained on paper in many schools because of teacher and quota shortages.