Title: Curricula in Afrin: Between “Turkification” and Restrictions on the Kurdish Language
Publisher: Syrians for Truth and Justice
Release date: 2023

Contemporary Syria, since its inception, has not once witnessed official recognition of the Kurdish language, with its use constantly banned in the official domain and even in the public sphere. The successive Syrian governments have forbidden Kurdish communities to open institutes or centers to teach their language. Worse yet, they persecuted and arrested those who tried to teach Kurdish or issued prints using it. The only exception came during the French Mandate (1920-1946) when the French authorities allowed Kurdish intellectuals to publish periodicals in Kurdish.

With the evacuation of the French forces, the Arab nationalist ideology established its dominance over the Syrian landscape and maintained hegemony as it proceeded with projects to melt into its pot the different nationalities existing in Syria. To this end, Arab nationalists deployed constitutions the governments adopted over a series of military coups and later by the government of the United Arab Republic (UAR) of Syria and Egypt.

The policy of “forced assimilation” peaked in the aftermath of the 1963 coup d’état, led and celebrated by a group of officers affiliated with the Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party (hereinafter Ba’ath Party) as Thawrat al-Thamen min Athar (March 8th Revolution). In the following years, the Ba’ath Party, the ruling party, inscribed its ideology into several articles of the 1973 Constitution. The extent of the incorporation of the Ba’athist mind-set in that constitution is evident especially in Article 1, which includes several “Arab nationalist” terms, such as “the state of the Federation of the Arab Republics,” “the Syrian Arab Republic,” “the Syrian Arab country,” “the Arab homeland,” and “the Arab nation.”

With the decades-long stress on the Arab identity and language, the first time that educational bodies managed to develop Kurdish curricula was after the sweeping March 2011 protests and the subsequent withdrawal of the government of Syria (GOS) from areas that are Kurdish-majority or have large Kurdish populations. The administrative entities of the GOS no longer operated in Afrin, Kobanî (Ayn al-Arab), and al-Hasakah in the summer of 2012, which then became under the control of the Democratic Union Party (PYD).

In 2014, the PYD established the Autonomous Administration, which is a federal governing regional body hinged on a self-issued social contract. Under the contract, the administration declared Kurdish, Arabic, and Syriac as the three official languages in its areas of governance and especially in the Afrin region, while guaranteeing the right of the various ethnic communities in the region to learn their original languages. Next, the administration rolled out two versions of the school curricula, one in Kurdish for Kurdish students and another in Arabic for Arab students. However, the administration faced harsh criticism for some of the ideas it included in the curricula. Detractors accused it of propagandizing some of the school materials to indoctrinate students with the ideas of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

However, the Afrin region was soon to see another set of curricula. In March 2018, the Turkish military and affiliated Syrian armed opposition groups launched Operation Olive Branch into Afrin and ultimately controlled it. Afterward, the Ministry of Education of the Syrian Interim Government (SIG)—an offshoot of the Syrian Opposition Coalition (SOC), developed its curricula. The ministry also changed school hours assigned to subjects, dedicating four hours to Turkish and four to Kurdish. Nevertheless, the ministry then cut the Kurdish language hours down to half, allowing for two hours only and, in some cases, one, while several schools dropped the subject altogether on the pretext of lacking Kurdish language teachers.

In tandem, Turkey and the ministry imposed the Turkish language on Syrian Kurds and Arabs who fled hostilities in their areas and sought refuge in the Afrin region. Additionally, they used the Turkish language course books to promote Turkish nationalist and religious figures and personalities, who are alien to the Syrian cultural and social environments.[1]