Turkey: Thousands attend opening of Kurdish language course
The centre in the city of Batman is set to begin classes on April 1 and some 200 people have already signed up to be among the first students, Aydin Unesi told AFP.
"We have the capacity of teaching 500 people in one term. We expect more people to apply for the language courses in the future," he said.
Unesi was able to open his teaching centre after months of battling bureaucratic hurdles, including the refusal of an operating licence because the doors were too narrow.
A second Kurdish language centre is also scheduled to begin teaching on April 1 in the city of Sanliurfa, also in the southeast, with some 80 students already enrolled in the courses, local sources said.
In a taboo-breaking move in 2002, the Turkish parliament allowed private institutions to teach the language of the sizeable Kurdish minority as part of reforms aimed at boosting Turkey’s struggling bid to join the European Union.
Brussels has told Ankara that it wants to see the reform properly implemented on the ground if the mainly Muslim country wants to begin membership talks with the pan-European bloc.
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