Turkey Persists in Denial of Basic Cultural and Language Rights |
Turkey Persists in Denial of Basic Cultural and Language Rights as Mayor dismissed for Providing Multi-Lingual Services
Turkey's highest
administrative court, the Council of State, ruled last week to dismiss
Abdullah Demirbaş, Mayor of the Sur district of Diyarbakır because the
municipality voted for the provision of services in languages other
than Turkish. This represents the latest example of the central
government’s inflexible and intolerant stance on linguistic rights. In
2006 the municipality carried out a survey on the linguistic
composition of the municipality which found that the proportion of
those speaking Turkish is 24%, Kurdish 72%, Arabic 1% and Syriac and
Armenian dialects 3%. On the basis of these findings, on October 2006
the Sur municipality voted to provide official services in Turkish,
Kurdish, English and Syriac, in order to properly serve the population
of this multi-ethnic and multi-lingual municipality.
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