Diyarbakır Sur Municipality mayor combats national discrimination

PanARMENIAN.Net - The mayor of Sur Municipality in Diyarbakır, Turkey, is continuing to face a discrimination case due to the local authorities’ provision of services in Kurdish, Armenian and Syriac and a decision to increase the salaries of officials speaking these languages, Hürriyet Daily News reports.

“The prosecutor will investigate whether our regulations are creating discrimination; I, however, have launched many systems in order to prevent discrimination,” Mayor Abdullah Demirbaş recently said.

According to Turkish law, the project that has been launched in the region is a crime, the mayor of the eastern district said. “To prevent discrimination, the government should reach out to the people and solve their problem in the quickest way.”

Given that English is tolerated by the Constitution, languages other than Turkish that are spoken in the southeast region should be approved as well, said Demirbaş.

The municipality has been offering services in Turkish and English, as well as Armenian, Kurdish and Syriac, since 2007.