Kurdish language schools

Some 3,000 people turned out for the opening ceremony on Sunday of one of Turkey’s first Kurdish language teaching centres in the mainly-Kurdish southeast of the country under EU-inspired reforms, the owner said.

The centre in the city of Batman is set to begin classes on April 1 and some 200 people have already signed up to be among the first students, Aydin Unesi told AFP.

“We have the capacity of teaching 500 people in one term. We expect more people to apply for the language courses in the future,” he said.

Unesi was able to open his teaching centre after months of battling bureaucratic hurdles, including the refusal of an operating licence because the doors were too narrow.