Speaking to Today's Zaman, Özcan said the new departments, which will be called Living Languages Institutes, to be opened at Mardin's Artuklu and Diyarbakır's Dicle universities, will start offering degrees next year.
Özcan said the previously floated idea of inviting teachers from Paris' Kurdish Institute has now been dismissed by YÖK, given the ideological sympathy instructors teaching there tend to have toward the terrorist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). YÖK will train its own instructors to teach in the new Kurdish departments.
“Post-graduate courses might start this year. We have given up on the idea of Kurdish-speaking foreign teachers. We will assign Kurdish-speaking instructors from universities' Turkish language and literature departments for now.”
Meanwhile, Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç said as part of the government's democratic initiative, the Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT) will start broadcasts in Arabic and Farsi.
