First Communal Kurdish School in Turkey To Open In Lice

“Read, Think, and Speak in Kurdish”

In an article appearing on vivahiba.com, Musa Ataç has written about the first communal Kurdish school in Turkey, construction on which recently began in the district of Lice in Diyarbakir Province. According to the article, the people of Lice are developing an alternative practice around education and ‘free life.’ The youth of the village of Kerwas (Turkish: Yalaza) made the decision to open a communal school and recently began work on its foundation. The youth taking part in the project are involved in everything from the school’s construction to education itself.

Education within the school will be given in Kurmancî and Kirmançkî (Zaza), while the school will not only serve as an educational facility but will also be employed a communal center where social problems can be debated.

Kurds who have been subjected to all forms of assimilation policies and state violence in an attempt to suppress their identity have taken an important step forward. The Kurds, without waiting for a Turkish state which continues to deny their right to mother-tongue education, have begun to organize their own social needs.

At the same time residents of the Peyas Neighborhood in the Kayapınar District of Diyarbakir Province have labelled the state-mandated changes to the names of their streets, avenues, villages and even their own names as a cultural genocide and have announced they will no longer accept them. The residents of Peyas have begun their campaign by changing all of the local street names to Kurdish.

Abdullah Demirbaş, the Mayor of the Sur Municipality in the center of Diyarbakir, responded to the school initiative, saying:

“I see the the founding of a school in the village of Kerwas that will provide education in Kurdish to be an historic step for the Kurds.”

“I consider these developments to be very important and meaningful. I look at these developments as preceding rights that come from legislation. Moreover I find the founding of a school in the village of Kerwas by the people using only their own resources to be particularly important.”

“Now we ourselves as a people must make use of our right to our mother-tongue. Instead of waiting for another we must construct our own organizations and mechanisms to provide Kurdish education relying on our own strength.”