Last week, Rudaw TV broadcast an interview with Ahmed al-Hilali, spokesperson of the Syrian Interim Presidency team tasked with implementing the January 29 agreement with the Kurdish administration in northeast Syria (Rojava), in which he addressed the future of Kurdish language education within Syria's transitional education framework. His statements revealed a position that raises serious concerns regarding the Syrian interim government's commitment to its declared obligations toward the Kurdish language and Kurdish-medium education.
According to Hilali, the education sector in Hasaka province is functioning well, and upon completion of the integration process, the national curriculum of Syria will be the sole educational framework. He stated that two proposals are under consideration regarding Kurdish language instruction:
• Kurdish is designated as an elective subject, taught two hours per week.
• The national curriculum, once finalized, is translated into Kurdish for Kurdish students.
Hilali expressed his personal position on both proposals, stating that the first, offering two weekly hours of Kurdish instruction, is constructive and without drawbacks. He rejected the second proposal, arguing that students educated in Kurdish will face significant disadvantages in the labor market, rendering Kurdish-medium education professionally unviable. He confirmed that both proposals have been submitted to the General Secretariat of the Syrian Interim Presidency for review, with a response pending.
These positions stand in direct contradiction to commitments already made at the highest level of the Syrian interim government. In Decree No. 13, specifically Articles 1, 2, and 3, the Syrian president recognized the plurality of Syrian society, affirmed Kurds as one of Syria's indigenous peoples, and designated the Kurdish language as a national language. The January 29 agreement similarly grants Kurdish regions a degree of administrative autonomy. Hilali's remarks are therefore inconsistent with both the letter and the spirit of these official commitments.
This is not the first time such a position has been advanced. In a television interview on al-Arabiya's program "Lil-Hadith Sila", Elham Ahmed, co-chair of the Foreign Relations Office of the Autonomous Administration, stated that Abdulhalim Khaddam, Vice President of Syria during the Baath regime from 1984 to 2005, had rejected the identical proposal of two hours of weekly Kurdish education in Kurdish-inhabited areas. She noted that this rejection was a contributing factor in the breakdown of negotiations with the Baath regime. This raises a fundamental question: how, after the Kurds, with the support of the Global Coalition, defeated ISIS and expelled the regime from their territories, dismantled a state curriculum that recognized only one language and one identity, and established an alternative educational framework, is it now conceivable to revert to the same position?
The concern regarding professional viability, as raised in the second proposal, is not an insurmountable obstacle. The state itself can invest in mechanisms that simultaneously develop the Kurdish language and expand Kurdish speakers' access to the labor market. As argued in a previous article by this author, Kurdish must become an official language in Syria, used across all state institutions, public offices, and as a medium of instruction. Kurds are present throughout Syria, with the majority concentrated in the provinces of Hasaka, Aleppo, and Damascus. If hundreds of thousands of Kurdish children are educated in their mother tongue, and Kurdish university graduates enter public institutions at all levels, the premise that Kurdish-medium education is professionally limiting becomes untenable.
It is not justifiable that, following decades of systematic oppression at the hands of the Baath Party and ISIS, the Syrian Kurdish people should again be compelled to struggle for the most basic linguistic and cultural rights. The Kurdish people are an indigenous component of Syrian society, and they hold the same right as Arab citizens to receive education in their mother tongue and to transmit their language to future generations. It is worth recalling that during Russia's military presence in Syria, despite no permanent Russian population in the country and Russia's direct role in civilian casualties, the Russian language was taught two hours per week on the Syrian coast. The Kurds, by contrast, have been a crucial part of Syria, fighting and sacrificing to defeat ISIS and resist the regime, and yet are now asked to relitigate the same demands. Kurds are neither occupiers nor guests in Syria; they are among its original peoples.
Numerous multilingual and multiethnic states have successfully developed inclusive language policies without suppressing minority languages or limiting professional opportunity. The following cases are instructive:
• Singapore did not become a global economic center by imposing a single language, but by recognizing four official languages: English, Malay, Mandarin Chinese, and Tamil. English functions as the primary language of government, business, and education, while the other three languages are maintained to preserve the cultural identity of each major ethnic community. Students learn English alongside their mother tongue, producing a functionally bilingual population. The state actively supports communication and administration in all four languages. In Syria, a similar approach would allow Arabic to remain the primary national language while formally recognizing Kurdish as an official language, rather than reducing it to a marginal or symbolic role.
• Canada’s Official Languages Act requires federal institutions to provide services in both English and French. By 2006, around 40 percent of federal public sector positions required bilingualism. This shows how language policy can be directly linked to employment. In Syria, integrating Kurdish into public administration would ensure that Kurdish speakers are not excluded from state institutions, addressing concerns about the job prospects of Kurdish-educated students.
• Finland recognizes both Finnish and Swedish as official national languages, even though Swedish speakers make up only about 5 percent of the population. The state funds a fully parallel Swedish-language education system from kindergarten through university. If a country can sustain full linguistic rights for a small minority, then in Syria, where Kurds number in the millions, the case for Kurdish-language education is even stronger.
In Syria, the Kurmanji dialect of Kurdish is not an undeveloped or untested medium of instruction. For 14 years it has functioned as a language of education in Rojava and across Syrian Kurdish regions, and has to a meaningful degree entered the professional and administrative sphere.
In Turkey, Kurmanji is recognized as a living language at universities including Artuklu, Dicle, and Van, where numerous master's and doctoral theses have been completed in the language. Kurdish is taught at the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales (INALCO) in France, one of Europe’s leading institutions for the study of world languages. In the former Soviet Union, a Kurdish-language school curriculum was developed and implemented for decades, producing many prominent intellectuals. In the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, Kurdish, including both Sorani and Kurmanji in its Bahdini subdialect, is the established language of education. In the United States, Voice of America (VOA) began broadcasting in Kurdish in April 1992 with dedicated state funding. If foreign governments have been able to sustain and develop the Kurdish language through institutional means, there is no credible basis for the Syrian interim government to deny Kurdish speakers the right to mother-tongue education.
When Ahmed al-Sharaa assumed the position of the interim Syrian president, and Asaad al-Shaibani was appointed acting foreign minister, Shaibani invoked Singapore as a model for Syria's future. Invoking Singapore as a political aspiration, however, requires more than rhetorical commitment; it requires concrete action, beginning with the recognition of linguistic diversity. The Singapore model is, at its core, a model of inclusive multilingualism, not of linguistic assimilation. If the Syrian interim government is genuinely committed to building a modern democratic state, it must recognize that national cohesion and sustainable development are achieved not through assimilation, but through the democratic integration of all communities, with the recognition of Kurdish as an official language as a foundational step.
Millions of Kurds speak Kurdish as their primary language; hundreds of thousands are literate in it; it is the medium through which they access knowledge and culture. The Kurdish language, with its deep historical roots, its cultural and literary heritage, and its established use across academic, diplomatic, political, governmental, and administrative domains, must be accorded official status and recognized as a foundational pillar of the new Syria. The continued marginalization of the Kurdish language endangers not only the future of the Kurdish people, but also the social cohesion and long-term stability of Syria. A truly new Syria can only be built on the recognition of Kurdish as one of its official languages.
Mizgin Hasan is a Kurdish Language Lecturer at the University of Rojava.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rudaw.
Comments
Rudaw moderates all comments submitted on our website. We welcome comments which are relevant to the article and encourage further discussion about the issues that matter to you. We also welcome constructive criticism about Rudaw.
To be approved for publication, however, your comments must meet our community guidelines.
We will not tolerate the following: profanity, threats, personal attacks, vulgarity, abuse (such as sexism, racism, homophobia or xenophobia), or commercial or personal promotion.
Comments that do not meet our guidelines will be rejected. Comments are not edited – they are either approved or rejected.
Post a comment