After the weekly Kurdish newspaper Xwebûn was not given to prisoners because of “incomprehensible language”, more news of rights violations came from the Bolu F-type Prison. The prison administration did not allow the newspaper because Kurdish was deemed a “foreign language”.

The ban came to public attention after the prisoner Abdürrahim Akalp wrote about it in a letter he sent to Peoples’ Democratic Party Deputy Alican Önlü.

İdris Gürmez criticised the ban and said that Turkey’s attitude towards Kurdish newspapers was as if Kurdish was a foreign language within the country. “This is unacceptable”, he said.

Meanwhile, the petition initiated by the Kurdish Language Platform, demanding that Kurdish be the language of education in Turkey, continues.