ABTTF President: “Despite UNESCO recommending that children be educated in their mother tongue and emphasising the importance of multilingual education, our country Greece continues to ignore our demand for bilingual minority kindergartens that will provide education in Turkish and Greek.”
The United Nations (UN) Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) declared 21 February as International Mother Language Day in 1999. International Mother Language Day is celebrated around the world on 21 February each year to promote linguistic and cultural diversity and multilingualism. This year’s theme for International Mother Language Day is ‘‘Multilingual education – a necessity to transform education’’.
Underlining that multilingual and multicultural societies exist through their languages, which sustainably transmit and preserve traditional knowledge and cultures, UNESCO pointed out that linguistic diversity is increasingly under threat as more and more languages are disappearing.
Recommending all countries to implement mother tongue-based education and to follow a multilingual education policy at the occasion of the 21 February International Mother Language Day, UNESCO recommends that children be given education in their mother tongue, which can also be combined with the official language of education in the first years of school education.
Noting that 40% of the world’s population does not have access to education in a language they speak or understand, UNESCO notes that at least 40% of the more than 6,700 languages spoken in the world are in danger of extinction in the long term.
“Despite UNESCO recommending that children be educated in their mother tongue and emphasising the importance of multilingual education, our country Greece continues to ignore our demand for bilingual minority kindergartens that will provide education in Turkish and Greek. Our children, who are forced to go to public kindergartens that are taught only in Greek, are deprived of learning their mother tongue Turkish. On the other hand, our primary schools which have their autonomous status are being closed one by one in violation of the relevant treaties. Learning the mother tongue and education in the mother tongue is one of the most basic human rights. On this occasion, we reiterate our demand for bilingual minority kindergartens, and we celebrate the 21 February International Mother Language Day of the Turkish community in Western Thrace and of everyone else’’, said Halit Habip Oğlu, President of the Federation of Western Thrace Turks in Europe (ABTTF).
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