{"id":45634,"date":"2011-10-18T05:42:26","date_gmt":"2011-10-18T02:42:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/?p=45634"},"modified":"2023-04-15T18:06:05","modified_gmt":"2023-04-15T15:06:05","slug":"turkey-university-begins-countrys-first-kurdish-course","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2011\/10\/18\/turkey-university-begins-countrys-first-kurdish-course\/","title":{"rendered":"Turkey university begins country&#8217;s first Kurdish course"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>A Turkish university has begun teaching the country&#8217;s first ever degree course in the Kurdish language.<\/h2>\n<figure id=\"attachment_45636\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-45636\" style=\"width: 304px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-45636\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A rally of Turkey&#39;s main Kurdish political party, the BDP Kurdish groups have campaigned for years for more rights<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>About 20 students have signed up to study Kurdish at Artuklu University in south-eastern city of Mardin.<\/p>\n<p>The government in Ankara started easing restrictions on the use of Kurdish in 2009 as part of its efforts to join the European Union.<\/p>\n<p>Kurds make up around a fifth of Turkey&#8217;s population and have for years been pressing for greater rights.<\/p>\n<p>The new undergraduate course will last four years and will cover both Kurdish language and literature.<\/p>\n<p>The head of the new programme at Artuklu University, Professor Kadri Yildirim, told the Hurriyet newspaper: &#8220;This city is the centre of upper Mesopotamia and Kurdish culture is a major part of this.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;As other universities start opening Kurdish language classes and once Kurdish is used in the primary education system, this department will become more popular.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Turkey&#8217;s governing Justice and Development Party announced a series of initiatives to improve the rights of Kurds three years ago, but has since been criticised for dragging its feet.<\/p>\n<p>Violence by Kurdish separatists has continued and Turkish nationalists have objected to attempts to reach out to the Kurds.<\/p>\n<p>Tens of thousands of lives have been lost during three decades of fighting between Kurdish rebels and the security forces.<\/p>\n<p>via BBC News &#8211; Turkey university begins country&#8217;s first Kurdish course.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Turkish university has begun teaching the country&#8217;s first ever degree course in the Kurdish language. About 20 students have signed up to study Kurdish at Artuklu University in south-eastern city of Mardin. The government in Ankara started easing restrictions on the use of Kurdish in 2009 as part of its efforts to join the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":672692,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[845],"tags":[4388,5341],"class_list":["post-45634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-scitech","tag-kurdish","tag-kurds"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45634"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45634\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/672692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}