The Minority Languages Dilemmas in Turkey: A Critical Approach to an Emerging Literature

Abstract

Turkey comprises many ethnic groups other than Turks including, but not limited to, Armenians, Assyrians, Alevi, Arabs, Circassians, Greeks, Kurds, Laz, and Zaza. These groups are ethnically different from Turks and were incorporated into the Ottoman Empire’s eastern provinces with de facto autonomy. The main objective of this study is to illustrate the need for a language curriculum and identify the obstacles that minority groups encountered in Turkey. This study examines three large communities: Arabs, Kurds, and Laz. The results indicate that minority people in Turkey who had poor Turkish language education were unable to learn their mother tongue within the formal educational settings from the foundation of the republic until 2012. Some of the ethnic groups’ languages, such as Laz, Kurdish, and Arabic, were started at schools as elective courses, but few, if any, textbooks written in these languages exist.