ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkey's government has approved a plan to open the country's first Kurdish-language department at a university as part of its efforts to reconcile with the Kurdish minority.
Kurds largely welcome the government's overtures to try to end the Kurdish conflict, which has killed tens of thousands of people as the rebels fight for autonomy in the Kurdish-dominated southeast.
Small scale violence continued Tuesday. For the third day in a row, stone-throwing Kurdish militants clashed with police across the nation in the wake of last week's anniversary of the 1978 founding of the rebel group.
The Cabinet's decision about the new university department was published in the Official Gazette on Tuesday in another step toward recognizing the once-banned Kurdish language.
