Al Hasakah Governor Meets Kurdish Language Teachers to Discuss Educational Rights

Official page of Al Hasakah Governorate

Al Hasakah Governor, Engineer Noureddine Ahmed's, meeting with Kurdish teachers.

The Governor of Al Hasakah, Engineer Noureddine Ahmed, met with a number of Kurdish language teachers to discuss ways to strengthen linguistic and educational rights and support the inclusion of Kurdish in the province’s education system, in line with the needs of its residents.

During the meeting, the governor heard a number of demands and proposals from teachers and students concerning educational and linguistic issues. He stressed the importance of following up on these demands and working to address them within the established administrative and legal frameworks.

The meeting also highlighted the importance of strengthening communication and coordination between the relevant authorities, educational staff and students to help improve the education system, address existing needs and support the province’s educational and linguistic environment.

Participants stressed the need to continue dialogue and communication among all relevant stakeholders to address challenges and further improve the educational process.

The Syrian government’s recent decision on the curriculum and the mechanism for teaching the Kurdish language has triggered widespread popular and educational reactions across the areas of Rojava [Northeastern Syria].

Local circles said limiting Kurdish-language instruction to a small number of classes, while preventing students from studying scientific subjects in their mother tongue, represents a setback to the gains achieved over the past 14 years.

The sensitivity surrounding Kurdish-language education in Syria is rooted in decades of history.

In 1962, an exceptional census in Al Hasakah province stripped around 120,000 Kurds of Syrian citizenship, according to Human Rights Watch. The consequences of statelessness later extended to subsequent generations of those families.

Citizenship was not the only point of contention. Human Rights Watch also documented restrictions on the use of Kurdish, bans on Kurdish-language publications, limitations on cultural activities and Kurdish celebrations, and policies that affected Kurdish cultural identity.

After the Baath Party came to power in 1963, Arabisation and cultural and linguistic exclusion became entrenched over subsequent decades, with many of these policies continuing under Bashar al-Assad.

The situation changed after 2011 across large parts of northeastern Syria.

As Damascus’s authority receded, the use of Kurdish expanded and eventually became a language of instruction within the education system developed by the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria. A generation of students subsequently studied in Kurdish for several consecutive years.

That system, however, remained outside the central government’s formal education structure, while its curricula and certificates continued to be subjects of dispute with Damascus.

This changed on 16 January 2026, when transitional President Ahmad al-Sharaa issued Decree No. 13 of 2026, recognising Syrian Kurds as an essential and integral part of the Syrian people and affirming their cultural and linguistic identity as part of the country’s national identity.

The decree also designated Kurdish as a “national language” and permitted its teaching in public and private schools in areas where Kurds constitute a significant proportion of the population.

However, the decree did not grant Kurdish the status of an official language.



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