CUS Press Release
For Immediate Release
December 15, 2025
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December 15 marks the first-ever World Turkic Language Family Day, established by UNESCO following a decision of its 43rd General Conference in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. The annual observance highlights the shared linguistic and cultural heritage of Turkic-speaking peoples and reinforces UNESCO’s commitment to multilingualism, cultural diversity, and the safeguarding of endangered languages.
The date commemorates a landmark moment in linguistic scholarship: on December 15, 1893, Danish linguist Vilhelm Thomsen announced his deciphering of the Orkhon Inscriptions, among the oldest known written records of the Turkic language family. Today, Turkic languages are spoken natively by more than 200 million people across a vast region of Eurasia, carrying rich written traditions, strong oral heritage, and diverse cultural practices.
Yet as the world prepares to celebrate this shared heritage, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is actively implementing policies designed to erase one of the most important branches of the Turkic language family: the Uyghur language, in its own homeland.
Celebrating Heritage While Ignoring Erasure
“UNESCO inaugurates World Turkic Language Family Day while the Uyghur language, as the root of all Turkic languages, faces state-sponsored extinction in our homeland,” said Executive Director Abdulhakim Idris. “China has criminalized our mother tongue in schools, destroyed our textbooks, and imprisoned the guardians of our language. We cannot claim to honor Turkic linguistic diversity while remaining silent about the systematic destruction of its most persecuted member.”
UNESCO has emphasized that Turkic languages are essential vehicles of identity, knowledge, and cultural expression. For Uyghurs, however, those very functions have been deliberately targeted.
The Architecture of Cultural Genocide
Since 2014, the CCP has implemented policies that meet the definition of cultural genocide:
• Education Ban: Uyghur has been eliminated as a medium of instruction. UN experts reported in 2023 and 2025 that nearly one million Uyghur children have been forcibly separated from their families and placed in state-run boarding schools, where speaking their native language is punished.
• Targeting Intellectuals: The custodians of Uyghur linguistic and cultural heritage have been systematically silenced. Literary critic Yalqun Rozi was sentenced to 15 years in prison for compiling Uyghur-language textbooks, while renowned folklorist Rahile Dawut is reportedly serving a life sentence for documenting Uyghur traditions. Hundreds of writers, poets, and linguists have disappeared into the prison and camp system.
A Call to UNESCO
UNESCO has stated that World Turkic Language Family Day aims to promote linguistic cooperation, cultural exchange, and dialogue among civilizations, in line with the UN’s multilingualism agenda and General Assembly resolution 71/328.
The Center for Uyghur Studies urges UNESCO to ensure that this new observance does not become a symbolic celebration detached from reality.
UNESCO must investigate the systematic ban on Uyghur-language education in the Uyghur homeland, a practice that directly violates the Convention on the Rights of the Child and contradicts UNESCO’s stated mission to protect linguistic diversity and safeguard languages as a core part of humanity’s common heritage.
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