Speaker: Dr. Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, University of Roskilde, Department of Languages and Culture, Denmark, & Åbo Akademi University, Department of Education,  Vasa, Finland

Biography:

Bilingual from birth in Finnish and Swedish. Main research interests: linguistic human rights, linguistic imperialism, bilingualism, multilingual education, language and power, subtractive spread of English, and the relationship between linguistic (and cultural) diversity and biodiversity (also in practice, on an ecological smallholding, with her husband, Robert Phillipson). Recipient of the 2003 Linguapax award and the 2003 Carl Axel Gottlund award. Publications: over 30 authored or edited books; close to 400 book chapters and scientific articles, in some 30 languages. For short CV and full list of publications, see http://akira.ruc.dk/~tovesk/.

Title: "Kurds in Turkey and in (Iraqi) Kurdistan – Comparison of Educational Linguistic Human Rights in Two Situations of Occupation"

Abstract:

Kurds, some 20-35 million people, have been said to be the world’s largest people without a state. In Turkey even speaking Kurdish in public places has been forbidden until recently. Kurdish-medium schools are not allowed; Kurdish children do not even have the right to study their mother tongue as a subject in schools. In theory, courses in the Kurdish language can be taught to teenagers and adults but in practice the obstacles and conditions have been so many and so bureaucratically and legally demanding that there are next to no courses. Kurds are under Turkish occupation, and Turkey continues to commit linguistic and cultural genocide (according to definitions of genocide in Articles 2b and 2e in the UN Genocide Convention) in relation to Kurdish nation/minority. See http://www.pen-kurd.org/Diyarbakir-seminar/tove-endangered-linguistic-and-cultural-diversities.html

Under the USA-led mainly American occupation in Iraq, Kurdish children in Kurdistan (with its own Regional Government), have their education mainly through the medium of Kurdish and they learn several foreign and/or second languages in school. Minorities (Turkmens, Assyrians, etc) have their own schools in their own languages. The Kurdistan Regional Government’s Minister of Education, Abdul-Aziz Taib says that every child in the world has the right to have their education through the medium of their own language(s) (interviews 15 and 17 March 2006 in Hawler/Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan).

The paper describes, compares and analyses the two situations, including some of the possible ethno-sociological and political science causes from a linguistic human rights point of view.