700 teachers to be trained for elective Kurdish classes
ANKARA - Radikal
Kurdish will be one of the elective courses available in schools. Hürriyet photo
The Ministry of Education has asked Artuklu University in the southeastern province of Mardin and Bingöl University in the eastern province of Bingöl to open programs with a quota of 700 people geared at training Kurdish teachers for new elective classes.“The Ministry has asked us to open up a one-year master program and suggested we take as many students as possible,” Kadri Yıldırım, the vice rector of Mardin’s Artuklu University said. The university is planning to take on 500 students for the program in September, Yıldırım said.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan recently announced the government would introduce Kurdish elective courses in public schools during the next education year. The move has been seen as part of the ruling party’s effort to find a solution to the Kurdish question.
The government plans to offer Kurdish language elective courses for secondary schools, beginning in the fifth grade.
Kurdish will be one of the elective courses available in schools after English, German and French. Courses of four or six hours a week will be available to students and if students demand they will be able to continue taking the class at the high school level as well.
According to the new regulation informative DVDs and CDs will be given to students along with Kurdish language books. “Cultural values of the countries where Kurdish is spoken,” “Being aware of the one’s own culture” and “Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s thoughts and revolutions” are said to be some of the topics of the language education regulation.
1000 RELIGIOUS FIGURES ON DUTY
ANKARA-Hürriyet Daily News
Turkey’s Religious Affairs Directorate has appointed 1,000 respected religious figures as personnel in the southeast and eastern parts of the country.
Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdağ had earlier announced that they would employ 1,000 mele, respected religious people, in the southeast and eastern parts of Turkey as contracted personnel under Turkey’s Religious Affairs Directorate.
The new personnel will work mostly in the eastern and southeastern provinces of Diyarbakır, Şanlıurfa, Siirt and Mardin. They will work as imams and Quran teachers.
“Mele, as we know in the eastern parts of Turkey, are people who are respected, although they have not had a religious education. We would like to benefit from these people and if they are able to pass the exam we shall open up [employment] to them,” Bozdağ said.