The right to education in the Kurdish language has become the political and cultural demand of all Kurdish civil society as a whole, in Turkey. This right is also demanded by the 12 million Kurds in Iran and the 2 million in Syria.

In Iraq, Kurdish is recognised by the Constitution as an official language like Arabic. In the Kurdish Federal Region of Kurdistan, all the primary and secondary schools provide education in Kurdish while the Universities teach some subject in Kurdish and others, mainly scientific ones, in English. Kurdistan's linguistic minorities (Turcomen and Assyrio-Chaldeans) have schools providing education in their own language.

In Turkey, where according to the European Union Commission about 15 to 18 million Kurds live, the linguistic issue has become a major issue of public debate. In a country that publicly displays its ambition of creating«an exemplary democracy» and where the«fortunate Turks » have over 150 universities in their language, their«Kurdish brothers», who make up about a quarter of the population, do not have a single public school or university in their language. The Turkish Prime Minister, Mr. Erdogan, during a visit to Germany, publicly described cultural assimilation as«crimes against humanity» — but did not say a word about the policy of assimilation systematically practiced by the Turkish Republic against the Kurds since 1923. He demands that Turkish immigrants to Germany should learn the Turkish language and culture before that of their host country — but does not recognise the same elementary right to his own Kurdish citizens, liming on their own ancestral lands.

This«double standard» policy is now a subject of debate in Turkey, of course, but also in Europe where the German press has recently called on Mr. Erdogan to show some consistency by granting the Kurds the rights that he is claiming for Turkish immigrants in Germany.

In the public debate that is at its height in this election period in Turkey, the Turkish nationalists take their stand on the Kemalist dogma of a unitary and homogenous state with a single language, Turkish, and a single culture. The Kurds are demanding a legal status of equality with Turkish in all walks of life, including education and the administration — at least in those provinces where the majority of the population is Kurdish. Between the two, there are also liberals and Moslem intellectuals who propose freedom to use Kurdish in private and its teaching as an optional subject in the schools while the majority of Kurds consider that the only chance of saving their ancient language, already the victim of decades of erosion and suffocation, and of passing it on to future generations is a system of public education in Kurdish, many Turks affirm that this would, in time, lead to partitioning the country.

The objective of the symposium is to provide a multi-facetted clarification of this issue, which is of the greatest importance for Turco-Kurdish relations and for democracy in Turkey and the Near East.

Alongside experts who will recall the experiments in multilingualism in Europe (Spain, Scandinavia, Switzerland) and in Asia (India) and South Africa and Canada and its impact on the stability of these countries, Turkish public figures and Kurds representative of the political and cultural life of Turkey, are being invited to bring their opinions and proposals to the debate.

Representatives of the European Commission and the Council of Europe as well as UNESCO will also be invited to this Symposium because of Turkey's status in Europe and also because the problems of threatened languages and cultures have become matters of universal concern.

The whole debate will be recorded and later broadcast on the many Kurdish television channels so as to inform the Kurdish public, which is mobilised and impassioned about the defence of its language.

The symposium will be conducted, with simultaneous translation, in English, French, Kurdish and Turkish.