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Turkey
Information board at the entrance of the Great Mosque of Diyarbakir (Amed). Date: April 8, 2022. Photo: Rudaw
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Turkish authorities recently put an information board at the entrance of the Great Mosque of Diyarbakir (Amed) in northeast Turkey (Northern Kurdistan) in four languages, excluding Kurdish, angering many Kurds.
The board, prepared by the country's department of religious affairs, informs the visitors about the rules of the mosque in English, Turkish, Russian and Arabic languages while the majority of the population is Kurdish. This has angered many Kurds who doubted any Russian tourists ever visited the mosque.
Mahmut Bozarslan, a Diyarbakir-based journalist, said in a tweet on Thursday that “I don’t know how many Russian tourists come to Diyarbakir but I do not remember seeing them so far. However, thousands of tourists from Iraqi Kurdistan come every year.”
Replying to the Kurdish journalist, a leadership member of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) said it was a “fair criticism,” adding that he would speak with the head of religious affairs and “resolve this issue.”
Russians make up the majority of tourists visiting Turkey but they rarely visit Diyarbakir, according to a Rudaw reporter on the ground. However, a large number of Kurds from the Kurdistan Region visit the city.
The mosque is said to be the oldest and most significant one in Mesopotamia.
Kurdish language had been banned in formal settings in Turkey since the establishment of the state until the AKP’s government slightly removed the ban a decade ago, allowing Kurds to speak their language in informal settings and granted them the right to attend Kurdish elective courses at school and continue their studies in their mother tongue language at college.
This is not the first time that Kurdish language is absent from information boards or signs. Kurdish words were removed from a sign on the road to Diyarbakir airport in 2018.
RELATED: Silencing of the Kurdish language in modern Turkey: who is to blame?
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