Kurdish, a language that speakers once feared to use, is enjoying a new era of recognition due to recent efforts by the Turkish government to restore the rights of the oft-neglected and intimidated Kurdish community.

Universities in southeastern Turkey now offer the country's first doctoral programs in Kurdish.

Dicle University in the province of Diyarbakır boasts being the first university to launch such a doctorate program in Turkey this year, while a university in the province of Bingöl is expected to admit doctoral students in the future.

Assistant Professor Hasan Karacan, deputy director of the Institute of Social Sciences at Dicle University, said they received 19 applications for the program and six students, including one from northern Iraq, which has a considerable Kurdish population, were admitted to the program. Students completing the master's degree in Kurdish language studies are admitted to the program, which offers courses both in Kurdish and Turkish.

Turkish universities already offer Kurdish courses and post-graduate degrees in Kurdish, though studies are usually limited to universities in the southeastern Turkey where a large Kurdish population is concentrated.

Education in Kurdish, one of the biggest languages in the Middle East, has long been a main demand of Kurds who faced oppressive state policies that refused to recognize the existence of an ethnic Kurdish identity.

As part of its efforts to restore the rights of the Kurdish community under the reconciliation process, the government introduced selective Kurdish courses at schools three years ago and greenlit private schools to teach a Kurdish curriculum. Several private-run schools were already opened but most of them were closed down due to a lack of interest.

The legal status of the language has been a thorny issue for Kurds especially after the emergence of the PKK terrorist organization, which claims to fight for Kurdish self-rule. A brutal crackdown on the Kurdish community in the late 1980s and 1990s forced many Kurds to refrain from speaking the language in public for fear of reprisal.