Brussels - On 5 and 6 November the Flemish MP Mathias Diependaele and the Kurdish National Congress (KNK) and Kurdish institutes from Brussels, Germany and Stockholm organized a conference about the Kurdish language and the use of mother language in education.
The conference took place in the Flemish parliament in Belgium. Around 80 academics, journalists and teachers participated in the conference. KNK-chairman Tahir Kemalîzade spoke about the developments in Turkey concerning Kurdish education rights. EU MP Frieda Brepoels of the New Flemish Alliance (N-VA) emphasised that she has always demanded for more Kurdish education rigths in the European Union.
Flemish MP Matthias Diependaele said: “The promises of the Turkish government, give hope, but also result in suspicion. They promise more freedom for television and radio broadcasts and the foundation of an university department for Kurdish language and literature. But what does this mean if Kurdish fonts are still forbidden? It looks like Turkey wants to flatter the European Union aimed at the accession negotiations.”
Kurdish speakers said they could learn much from the language struggle in Belgium between the Flemish (Dutch) and Walloons (French speakers). The Flemish fought for the recognition of Dutch as an education- and government language, when Belgium was dominated by the French speaking Walloons.
Chairman of the Kurdish Institute in Brussels Derwich Ferho added that there is a problem for the Kurdish culture. “But an extra problem for Kurdish, is that Kurdistan is divided between four countries: Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria. This resulted in many dialects. We actually need a language Union, like the one between Flanders and the Netherlands.”
Other Flemish politicians like Kris Van Dijck spoke about Dutch education in Flanders, Frieda Brepoels spoke about the role of the Kurdish question in the European Union, Guido Moons compared the Kurdish and Flemish struggle for cultural recognition and Marc Hendricks spoke about integration in Flanders.
According to the BBC the sense of Flemish identity is all the more acute as it was suppressed by the French-speaking elites that ran Belgium after the 1830 revolution. As the Dutch-speaking majority demanded recognition, it was mainly pressing claims against the Belgian state. But from the 1960s this changed slowly when a series of constitutional reforms gradually devolved more powers to the regions (Photo: ANF).
© Rudaw
