‘Teacher, I will learn Kurdish better.’

I am a foreign language teacher. I am Kurdish. Last year I worked in a private school. The earthquake we experienced in February affected us all very much. But … I had to recover and support my students. 

The schools reopened after about a month after the earthquake. They sent the students from the earthquake zone to our … school. Malatya is a predominantly Kurdish city [which was impacted by the quake] – a few students came from there. I was aware of this and entered the class in this way. 

My new Kurdish students were 5th graders, and they came from a public school. … They were very foreign. Since all of their friends were Turkish and it was a private school, I realized that they were very embarrassed. Here, private schools teach German from primary school onwards, but high schools only teach German in high school. My students from Malatya had never taken German lessons. 

I started to get acquainted. I introduced myself but I made them feel that I was Kurdish on purpose. My aim was to make them feel comfortable. When I said that, they smiled at me and introduced themselves. Of course, all three of us were afraid. They were afraid of being ostracized and maybe worse if they said they were Kurdish, and I was afraid that they would think of their fears and move away from me. So I moved slowly and carefully. They had missed many topics because they came late to class. So I started to explain the topics for them from the beginning. Of course, I also included my other students in the class and did this together with them. Since the German alphabet is similar to the Kurdish [Kurmanji] alphabet, those who know Kurdish do not have much difficulty. So at least because it is the larynx, they do not have much difficulty in pronouncing it. So I purposely asked my students to write and pronounce both German words and Kurdish words. In this way, they also learned that I speak Kurdish. Since most of my students in the class had difficulty with pronunciation, I asked them to pronounce it. Both of them had very good pronunciation, even though they were learning it for the first time. This helped them both to talk to their classmates and to think positively about German. 

One found it very difficult. He came to school for a few days and then stopped coming. I think his family couldn't get used to our area either. He didn't like it here anyway. And private school was not an environment they were used to. They went back to Malatya. The other came to school for a while and then went back to Malatya. One of the most beautiful things I remember about her was when she said, ‘Teacher, I will learn Kurdish better.’

They could not stay here. They said that Malatya was more beautiful than here and they did not want to stay here. There are many reasons for this. The biggest reason was that they were ‘Kurds.’ It made them feel helpless in this foreign city and it would also cause them to lose their own identity. Knowing that this would result in a horrible life, they could not stay here and returned to Malatya.

Jiyan, Kurmanji speaker and teacher in Bakur 
(Edits made for clarity. Emphasis added. Names changed or omitted to protect privacy.)