Last week, Rudaw TV broadcast an interview with Ahmed al-Hilali, spokesperson of the Syrian Interim Presidency team tasked with implementing the January 29 agreement with the Kurdish administration in northeast Syria (Rojava), in which he addressed the future of Kurdish language education within Syria's transitional education framework. His statements revealed a position that raises serious concerns regarding the Syrian interim government's commitment to its declared obligations toward the Kurdish language and Kurdish-medium education.
According to Hilali, the education sector in Hasaka province is functioning well, and upon completion of the integration process, the national curriculum of Syria will be the sole educational framework. He stated that two proposals are under consideration regarding Kurdish language instruction:
• Kurdish is designated as an elective subject, taught two hours per week.
• The national curriculum, once finalized, is translated into Kurdish for Kurdish students.
Hilali expressed his personal position on both proposals, stating that the first, offering two weekly hours of Kurdish instruction, is constructive and without drawbacks. He rejected the second proposal, arguing that students educated in Kurdish will face significant disadvantages in the labor market, rendering Kurdish-medium education professionally unviable. He confirmed that both proposals have been submitted to the General Secretariat of the Syrian Interim Presidency for review, with a response pending.
These positions stand in direct contradiction to commitments already made at the highest level of the Syrian interim government. In Decree No. 13, specifically Articles 1, 2, and 3, the Syrian president recognized the plurality of Syrian society, affirmed Kurds as one of Syria's indigenous peoples, and designated the Kurdish language as a national language. The January 29 agreement similarly grants Kurdish regions a degree of administrative autonomy. Hilali's remarks are therefore inconsistent with both the letter and the spirit of these official commitments.
This is not the first time such a position has been advanced. In a television interview on al-Arabiya's program "Lil-Hadith Sila", Elham Ahmed, co-chair of the Foreign Relations Office of the Autonomous Administration, stated that Abdulhalim Khaddam, Vice President of Syria during the Baath regime from 1984 to 2005, had rejected the identical proposal of two hours of weekly Kurdish education in Kurdish-inhabited areas. She noted that this rejection was a contributing factor in the breakdown of negotiations with the Baath regime. This raises a fundamental question: how, after the Kurds, with the support of the Global Coalition, defeated ISIS and expelled the regime from their territories, dismantled a state curriculum that recognized only one language and one identity, and established an alternative educational framework, is it now conceivable to revert to the same position?
The concern regarding professional viability, as raised in the second proposal, is not an insurmountable obstacle. The state itself can invest in mechanisms that simultaneously develop the Kurdish language and expand Kurdish speakers' access to the labor market. As argued in a previous article by this author, Kurdish must become an official language in Syria, used across all state institutions, public offices, and as a medium of instruction. Kurds are present throughout Syria, with the majority concentrated in the provinces of Hasaka, Aleppo, and Damascus. If hundreds of thousands of Kurdish children are educated in their mother tongue, and Kurdish university graduates enter public institutions at all levels, the premise that Kurdish-medium education is professionally limiting becomes untenable.
It is not justifiable that, following decades of systematic oppression at the hands of the Baath Party and ISIS, the Syrian Kurdish people should again be compelled to struggle for the most basic linguistic and cultural rights. The Kurdish people are an indigenous component of Syrian society, and they hold the same right as Arab citizens to receive education in their mother tongue and to transmit their language to future generations. It is worth recalling that during Russia's military presence in Syria, despite no permanent Russian population in the country and Russia's direct role in civilian casualties, the Russian language was taught two hours per week on the Syrian coast. The Kurds, by contrast, have been a crucial part of Syria, fighting and sacrificing to defeat ISIS and resist the regime, and yet are now asked to relitigate the same demands. Kurds are neither occupiers nor guests in Syria; they are among its original peoples.
Numerous multilingual and multiethnic states have successfully developed inclusive language policies without suppressing minority languages or limiting professional opportunity. The following cases are instructive: