Afrinpost – Special
The Kurds inside the occupied Kurdish region of Afrin, affiliated with the Self-Administration in northern Syria, is taking lessons of the Kurdish language secretly out of sight of the Turkish occupation and its Islamic militias affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, in a situation similar to what the Kurds were doing before the outbreak of the Syrian crisis in March 2011.
The Turkish occupation prohibited teaching in the Kurdish language, which is the mother tongue of Afrin residents, as Ankara did not include it in the list of exams for this year, while it made the Turkish language a main subject.
However, the Kurds there decided not to surrender to the Turkish occupier and its Muslim Brotherhood militia, as the solidarity of the Kurds in the occupied territory became an impediment to the implementation of the occupation’s plans, and in the context, “Rojin, a pseudonym for security reasons” , she gives lessons of the Kurdish language secretly inside Afrin , said to “Afrin Post” “We are giving Kurdish language lessons invisibly out of sight of the occupation because if they discover our matter, our fate will be kidnapping.”
She added: “I have 16 students who have been studying the Kurdish language for months somewhere in the city of Afrin, 6 of them have completed the third level of the Kurdish language and I will complete the rest.”
“We are doing what we were doing before the Syrian crisis when the Syrian regime was preventing teaching in the Kurdish language, but after years we removed the Syrian regime from Afrin and we will remove the occupiers as well and our language will remain a thorn in their eyes,” Rojin said.
She had studied in one of the institutes of Kurdish language and literature in Afrin before the occupation, and she graduated from it, and she was teaching the Kurdish language in schools during the control of “Self-Administration”, and after the occupation she returned to teach the youth again without surrender.
After the Turkish military occupation was applied to the Kurdish region, the occupation sought to separate all Kurdish teachers from Afrin schools, including what the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights announced that the so-called “Directorate of Education” of the Turkish occupation, in mid-September 2019, separated about 25 teachers the majority of them are females from their schools in the district of Jenderes, as an arbitrary measure in exchange for the appointment of settlers from other areas to Afrin in their place.
And the Turkish occupation, after launching the aggression in January 2018, deprived more than 49 thousand students of Afrin from learning in their Kurdish mother tongue, in addition to depriving hundreds of students of Afrin University and its institutes from completing their education.
Among the Turkish violations of the privacy of the Kurdish people and the Syrian homeland, the Turkish occupation worked to introduce its symbols and slogans and teach them to the children of Afrin as national symbols, such as the presence of the Turkish flag as an example of the synonym of “the Flag” within the course of primary classes, which provides proof of national smelter attempts, policies to deny the existence of the Kurdish people.
Before the Turkish invasion of Afrin, the average of Kurdish students was 95%, as these were receiving their education in the pure Kurdish language in all subjects, while the children of the Arab component residing in Afrin were receiving their education in the Arabic language.
After the Turkish occupation, Kurdish education was limited to teaching only the Kurdish language, while education is now in Arabic, along with the forced introduction of the Turkish occupation language into the curriculum, in addition to the scandalous religious ideology that the occupation seeks to educate generations on strict ideas and intensive religious education!
