(File)
Nov 28,
2023. Posted by Balkan Periscope - Hellas
The
majority of women living in the outskirts of the Kurdish province of Amed
(Diyarbakir) in southeast Turkey were unable to benefit from cancer-related
services in 2022 because they could not speak Turkish, revealed a health
syndicate this week.
The women, aged over 40, were asked if they could benefit from state health centers dedicated to cancer diagnosis.
Fifty-eight percent of them said they could not benefit from them because they could not speak Turkish.
They were forced to go with family members who could translate for them.
In these
conservative areas, it’s expected for males to be the ones accompanying the
women of their family in a similar situation, which in turn often makes the
women uncomfortable, preventing them from speaking freely to the doctors.
Orak said they postponed the publication of the survey, which has yet to occur,
due to the February quakes in Turkey which killed over 50,000 people and
devastated over ten provinces.
She noted that 58 of the interviewed women said that they had never heard that
such cancer diagnosis centres existed.
The Kurdish language is banned in public settings in Turkey. The government
provides some services in Arabic for Syrian refugees but millions of Kurds are
prohibited from speaking in their mother tongue in public places.
Last year, Turkish authorities put an information board at the entrance of the
Great Mosque of Diyarbakir in English, Turkish, Russian and Arabic. The absence
of Kurdish language angered Kurds.
Kurdish words were removed from a sign on the road to Diyarbakir airport in
2018.
Rudaw
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