Reality of Kurdish Language following Turkification of Afrin

On May 15 of each year, the Kurdish people celebrate the Kurdish Language Day, since the Kurdistan National Congress (KNK) has dedicated it in 2006, due to the development of the Kurdish language and its spread during the past few years, since the start of the July 19 revolution, especially in Afrin, Turkish occupier through his mercenaries desecrated the process of sacrifices and the hardship of generations in preserving and developing the mother language by imposing Turkification curricula on the residents of the occupied territories.

In Syria, in which the suffering of the Kurds did not differ from the rest of their Kurdish brothers in other parts of Kurdistan, it was prevented from speaking the Kurdish language or naming children with the Kurdish names, and imposing all policies of denial against the Kurdish people.

The administrator in the Committee for the Training and Education of the Democratic Society in Aleppo, and one of the pioneers of the Kurdish language in NE Syria, Mannan Jaafar, stressed during an interview with ANHA agency, that the basic building block for the start of the Kurdish language revolution was placed long ago, including developing dictionaries and secretly writing rules of language to preserve them from fascist systems.

Jaafar indicated that he saw the Kurdish letters in 1978, through the books of the Kurdish poet Jakir Khawin, and worked to publish it within a narrow range of knowledge before the start of the nineteenth revolution of July. Afrin city was distinguished before the occupation, with the opening of the first school, institute and university in which it was taught in the Kurdish and Arabic language to form the beginning of a new educational stage with the aim of graduating teachers and specialists in all fields.

For the first time in NE Syria, a Kurdish language school was launched in the village of Daraqali in the Afrin region, on October 6, 2011, and the school was named after the "martyr Fawzi".

According to the statistics of the Education Body  the number of schools in the city of Afrin reached 318 schools, which were under the supervision of the Body before the Turkish occupation of the region.

It also included about fifty thousand students in the elementary, preparatory and secondary levels, with staff of 3712 teachers who were in public schools, in addition to the presence of dozens of private schools, which include thousands of children and students, and include kindergarten, musical, artistic and informational institutes.

The Viana Ammar Institute was also established in 2014 in the center of Afrin, and it included 11 sections for preparing and qualifying teachers in all academic specializations to manage all schools in the city, and under the supervision of a cadre of 82 teachers and dozens of employees at the time.

While the number of students reached 500 male and female students, before the Turkish occupation of these areas, some students were killed and were injured in their villages as a result of that attack, and after the occupation, the entire contents of the institute were robbed by occupiers. The University of Afrin opened in August 2015 at the initiative of a group of university professors and funded by the Democratic Autonomous Administration to embrace students who would like to complete their educational career, and was the first university in NE Syria. The university included six colleges: "Medicine, electromechanical engineering, media, economics, agriculture, and Kurdish literature" under the supervision of a cadre consisting of 51 specialists, in addition to nearly twenty employees, and the total number of students reached 469 students before the war.

The Central Library included 3150 books and scientific laboratories containing many scientific devices with more than fifty computer.

The Kurdish language after the Turkish attack and occupation

After the start of the attack, classes stopped in all educational institutions in Afrin due to indiscriminate bombing, as this posed a threat to the safety of students.

After the occupation, the contents of these institutions were looted and destroyed, and many of them were turned into headquarters for the Turkish occupation army and its mercenaries. Some students and professors were kidnapped and assaulted including the Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Dr. Abdul Majeed Sheikho, 67 years old.

The Human Rights Organization, Afrin - Syria, revealed to ANHA agency’s correspondent the statistics of the kidnapping of Kurdish language teachers since the occupation of the city, which amounted to 65 male and female teachers.

The human rights activist in the organization, Ibrahim Sheikho confirmed that the Turkish occupation imposed the Turkish language on schools, and turned the Kurdish language into a marginalized language to be taught throughout the week in one or two classes, and then canceled it after a while under the pretext of the lack of teaching staff. 

Sheikho described the education situation in occupied Afrin as “bad,” and stressed that, in addition to Turkish, the strict religious curriculum is taught by some “imams and extremist religious associations loyal to the Muslim Brotherhood.” Sheikho points out that the remaining Kurds in Afrin refrain from sending their children to schools. For fear of being kidnapped by unknown persons or extremist mentality.

The following is a list of a series of crimes committed against Kurdish children in Afrin schools occupied by settlers since the beginning of 2024 alone, according to what was documented by the Human Rights Organization Afrin - Syria:

On May 5, a 9-year-old Kurdish child, Shorsh Muhammad Abdo, from the Amra village of Rajo was attacked by settler children at school, which led to a fracture in one of his upper limbs and he was subsequently transferred to a hospital.

On May 1, a settler boy, from the Hasaka countryside, named “Ali Darwish” (15 years old) assaulted the Kurdish child, “Muhammad Farid Mustafa” (9 years old), from the people of Jaqmaq Kabir, residing in the town of Rajo. He is in the third grade of primary school with a knife, after he entered the courtyard of Thabet Khalaf Al-Housh Primary School to be transferred to the hospital.

On March 19 of this year, three of the settlers’ sons beat the child, “Avand Shaheen Safar Sidhu,” (14 years old), inside the school of Rajo’s village of Kusa.

On March 15, 2024, the boy “Rudi Muhammad Jaqal” (16 years old), from the people of Jindires, was beaten and stabbed with a knife in his right leg by three young men, sons of settlers, near Afrin Hospital on Villas Street in the occupied city of Afrin.

On March 13, 2024, the Kurdish boy, “Ahmed Khaled Mamo Madda,” was killed as a result of being assaulted with ten knife wounds by the mercenary, “Yamen Al-Ibrahim,” in the city of Jenderes. After killing him, he threw his body into a water well on the road to the village of Tal Salur.

On March 12, 2024, a mercenary affiliated with the mercenaries of the leader “Abu Asaad” from Faylaq al-Sham, opened fire on the 8-year-old child, the son of the citizen “Salam Abdeen Amiko,” from the village of “Kazih” - Maidana Brajo.

On February 25, the Kurdish student Shiar Ibrahim Omar from the village of Qantara was stabbed with sharp objects by 5 students, sons of mercenaries settling in Mobata.

According to Sheikho, in occupied Afrin alone there are 26 shops designated for openly selling weapons, and that carrying weapons is restricted to settlers, while Kurds are prohibited from carrying weapons even in cases of self-defense. Stressing that the extent of the threats and terrorism practiced against Kurdish citizens, especially children, youth, minors and women, constitutes a major dilemma and requires an international stance.

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ANHA