As the Turkish state continues to violate human rights in its Kurdish regions, the EU-funded DEMTUREUROPE project is exploring why the European Court of Human Rights is proving ineffective.

As the Turkish state continues to violate human rights in its Kurdish regions, the EU-funded DEMTUREUROPE project is exploring why the European Court of Human Rights is proving ineffective.

Analysis: With thousands having already fled the rebel offensive in Aleppo and surrounding areas, Syrian Kurds fear for their future in the country's northwest.

The sudden advance of armed groups hostile to the Damascus regime plays into the hands of Ankara, which controls these militias. These groups are also hostile to the Kurds.

International law protects the rights of persons to assert their membership in an ethnic minority and to express themselves in the minority’s traditional language. The U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities, in particular, requires states to ensure that members of minorities “have adequate opportunities to learn their mother tongue,” explaining that such persons have “the right . . . to use their own language, in private and in public, freely without interference or any form of discrimination.”254 Although the declaration lacks the binding legal force of a treaty, it constitutes an authoritative explication of existing treaty norms protecting the rights to free expression and non-discrimination. A similar concern for protecting minority-language speakers from discrimination on the basis of language is found in the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, which bars such discrimination with regard to all of the rights within its purvey, including the right to free expression.255 Although the European Court on several occasions rejected the claim that language rights include the right to use the language of one’s choice in communicating with public authorities, it has struck down burdens based solely on “considerations relating to language” in a decision involving French-speaking residents of the Flemish community who wanted their children to attend French-language schools.0 In other words, the court has been reluctant to impose positive obligations on states to accommodate the linguistic preferences of their citizens, but has at the same time recognized the state obligation not to interfere in citizens’ use of their language.1 Consequently, legal obstacles in Turkey that preventindividuals from administering private language courses in Kurdish or a private Kurdish-language television station would violate the intent of such rulings. The U.N. Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, whose mandate specifically includes the protection of linguistic minorities, has been even more active in support of language rights. In a landmark 1979 study, the sub-commission praised the efforts of numerous states that had taken steps to facilitate the use of minority languages in a variety of contexts, including in communications with state authorities.2 It has also shown that it regards the repression of linguistic minorities to be a serious breach of international law, passing a 1993 resolution condemning Yugoslavia for banning in Kosovo “the use of the Albanian language, notably within the public administration and services.”3 International legal protections on language, as well as the concern shown by numerous international bodies on the topic, reflect the central place of language in ethnic and cultural identity. Language is commonly taken as a prime indicator of the individual’s group identification; for this reason, language repression has almost always played a role in policies of group domination and forced assimilation.