Discrimination

28 Discrimination in Turkey’s Education System
In practice, it has been reported that when students
choose one of these electives, in many
schools the administration attempts to convince
them to change their choice of elective by claiming
that not enough students will choose the course
in question or that the school will not be able to
find a teacher. 15 An NGO working on the subject of
the Laz language states that local education authorities
advise students and their families not to
choose the Living Languages and Dialects elective
language courses.
One teacher recounted a contrasting case in a
school in Mardin, saying that at a school attended
mostly by Arabic-speaking students, the school
administration encouraged children to choose the
Kurdish elective course in order to learn Kurdish,
one of the languages spoken in the region.
‘I taught it myself... There was no teacher. I knew Kurdish.
I taught the class myself. The children speak Arabic,
as normally their mother tongue is Arabic, but the school
administration told them to choose Kurdish because it’s
widely spoken in the area. This is an exceptional situation...’
16
Problems with the training and appointment of
teachers
When planning the addition of these electives
to the curriculum, insufficient preparation was carried
out regarding the training and appointment of
teachers for these subjects. The non-thesis master’s
programme run by the Department of Kurdish Language
and Culture (Kurdology Department) of the
Institute of Living Languages at Mardin Artuklu
University trains teachers qualified to teach Kurdish
lessons, but despite having produced 1,000
graduates, only 27 of these have been appointed. 17
There is therefore a clear paradox here, with some
students who choose to take the elective in Kurd-
15 Account given by a representative of KAFFED at a
workshop held in Diyarbakır on 14 February 2015.
16 Teacher focus group, Mardin, 10 February 2015.
17 18 graduate teachers were appointed in the
first year and 9 in the second. Interview with the
president of the Institute of Living Languages,
Prof. Kadri Yıldırım, Diyarbakır, 11 February 2015.
ish being told that the course will not run due to a
problem with obtaining teachers, 18 while hundreds
of teachers with the required qualifications to teach
the language have not been appointed.
No university programme has been established
to train teachers for the Laz, Adyghe and Abaza
language courses. Elective Laz courses are taught
by teachers who have previous experience working
with the language. The Laz Institute runs a Laz
language certificate course, and is holding discussions
with the MoNE on the subject of making it
possible for people who complete the course to
teach the Laz elective. 19 Adyghe and Abaza electives
are taught by teachers who have successfully
completed the certificate course run by the Federation
of Caucasian Associations (KAFFED). 20
Kurdish Language and Literature 21 and Georgian
Language and Literature 22 departments have been
established at some universities. The Circassian
Language and Literature Section of the Department
of Caucasian Languages and Cultures, which
opened in the 2013-14 academic year at Düzce University’s
Faculty of Arts and Sciences, provides
education programmes on the Adyghe language. 23
These departments were established not in facul-
18 See statement by the president of the Eğitim-
Sen Şanlıurfa Branch President: ‘Kürtçe Dersini
İdareciler Boykot Ediyor’, 11 June 2014, http://
www.haberler.com/kurtce-dersini-idarecilerboykot-ediyor-6141406-haberi/
19 Laz Institute, op. cit.
20 ‘The teachers for the subject were chosen from
among retired teachers or those who teach other
subjects at schools and have received certificates
from the Teacher Education Programmes run
by KAFFED in Ankara in 2006 and by KAFFED
in collaboration with the Kayseri Caucasian
Association and the Kahramanmaraş Caucasian
Association and who know their mother tongue
and are sensitive to the issue.’ KAFFED, op. cit.
21 Mardin Artuklu University, Muş Alparslan
University and Bingöl University.
22 Düzce University, Ardahan University and Kafkas
University.
23 ‘Düzce Üniversitesi Fen Edebiyat Fakültesi
Kafkas Dilleri ve Kültürleri Çerkes Dili
ve Edebiyatı Bölümü’, Düzce University,
http://kafkas.fef.duzce.edu.tr/Dokumanlar/
eb9750a1-c815-4b2e-b067-4d740d3209b1.pdf