URFA - Eğitim Sen Riha Branch Co-Chair Özlem Ulutaş Şengül stated that Kurdish courses were removed from the elective courses form in many schools in the city and that they would file a criminal complaint against the administrators.
The application period for elective courses has started again for students who will study at schools with the start of the mid-term break of the 2022-2023 academic year in Urfa. According to the information on the official website of the Governorship of Urfa, while there is a shortage of teachers throughout the city, the shortage of teachers for the elective course "Living Languages and Dialects" is much higher.
Kurdish Language and Literature departments were opened in Mardin Artuklu, Muş Alparslan and Bingöl Universities, and Zaza Language and Literature departments were opened in Bingöl and Dersim with the approval of the Kurdish Language and Literature Department by the Higher Education Institution (YÖK) on January 26, 2011. Since the opening of the departments, approximately 100 students graduate from these departments every year. The number of Kurdish teachers became 82 with the last appointment made by the Ministry of National Education.
KURDISH LANGUAGE REMOVED FROM APPLICATION FORM
The process of choosing elective courses to be taught in the 2022-2023 Academic Year period in secondary schools affiliated to the Ministry of National Education (MEB) started with January 3, and since September 2012, "Living Language and Applications for elective courses in the Kurmanji and Zazaki dialects of Kurdish have started under the name of "Dialects". Unlawfulness began to occur in many schools in Riha with the beginning of the choice of elective courses. While many schools in the center of Urfa did not open this branch even though there were student preferences for Kurmanci courses, in Halfeti, more than 90 percent of the schools were even removed from the application forms for elective courses in Kurdish.
CRIMINAL COMPLAINT
Şengül talked about the obstacles they faced in Helfetî district of Urfa and stated that the majority of school administrators did not distribute the elective course forms to the students, and that a couple of schools that did have removed the Living Languages and Dialects elective course from the form. Stating that this is a crime, Şengül said that they will file a criminal complaint against the school administrators, who experienced similar situations both in Helfetî and in the center of Urfa.
MA / Ömer Akın