The People’s Democratic Party (HDP) has taken the issue of sealing the doors of schools opened to provide education in Kurdish to the Turkish parliament by submitting a parliamentary question to the Minister of Internal Affairs, Efgan Ala. HDP asked: “Is the demand for education in the mother tongue propaganda for a terrorist organisation? If not, what is the reason for starting an inquiry into Kurdish schools?”

HDP Amed (Diyarbakır) deputy Nursel Aydogan has submitted a parliamentary question on the probe started by the Diyarbakir Public Prosecution Office on the ground of articles of the Turkish Penal Code; “opening an education institution without permission” and “committing a crime in the name of an organisation” regarding the Kurdish schools.

In justification of the questions, Aydogan stressed that education in Kurdish is once again being treated within the framework of security policies, adding: “But the then prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said legal reforms would immediately be made for the legalization of Kurdish as an education language as well as the opening of private schools in Kurdish in the context of the democratization package that was recently passed”.

The questions to which Aydogan demanded a reply from Internal Affairs Minister Ala are as follows:

1- Is the demand for education in Kurdish propaganda for a terrorist organisation according to your ministry? If it is not deemed as propaganda for a terrorist organisation, then what is the reason for the inquiry started by the public prosecutors against the newly opened Kurdish schools?

2- While the talks between Mr. Ocalan and the state authorities continue for the building of an honourable peace, do you think that it is a contradiction that your ministry reacts to civil initiatives for education in Kurdish through police raids? If you do not think so, on what grounds do you not find it contradictory?

3- Do you think that education in Kurdish should be more than a privilege of the upper class able to send their children to private schools and should be the right of poor Kurdish children and organised within the framework of a social state?