İnce pledges education in 3 languages in Turkey’s Kurdish-majority Diyarbakır

Main opposition Republican People's Party's (CHP) presidential candidate Muharrem İnce pledged Monday that if elected president, students will be taught in three languages.

"The first one will be our official language Turkish, secondly it will be the language spoken in the household, the mother tongue, Kurdish or Arabic whichever it may be, and thirdly an international language like English," he explained during a meeting in Kurdish-majority city Diyarbakır in southeastern Turkey.

In Turkey, 18 percent of the 80-million-strong population is Kurds, various estimates suggest. They are concentrated largely in the southeastern cities of the country.

İnce previously visited pro-PKK Peoples' Democratic Party's (HDP) Presidential candidate Selahattin Demirtaş, who is currently on trial for several terror-related charges, in Edirne prison where the latter asked him to visit his family that resides in Diyarbakır.

İnce's wife Ülkü also visited Demirtaş's wife Başak at their home late Monday after the CHP candidate's campaign meeting in Diyarbakır.

The HDP has come under fire for its close links to the PKK, which is listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the U.S. and the EU. Members of the party have so far declined to call the PKK a terrorist group and have attended PKK militants' funerals, two of whom were suicide bombers that killed dozens of civilians in multiple bombings in Ankara.