The Kurds are a minority in all the countries they inhabit, and which they have inhabited for thousands of years. The existing governments of those countries, especially Turkey, either heavily discourage or outright outlaw the teaching of Kurdish, and publishing in Kurdish. As a result of this, the Kurds of Turkey who speak the Kurmanji dialect are quickly losing their identity. I believe that we should do our best to prevent abuses to those who are powerless all over the world, whenever these abuses may happen. Right now, those abuses are happening in Turkey, and it is the duty of every decent human being -- Turk, Kurd, Chinese, Indian, or Inuit --  to oppose it.  As Martin Luther King Jr. once said, injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. 

Kurdish is a Northwest-Iranian "dialect continuum" of the Indo-European language family (Armenian, Latin, Greek, German, English, Russian, and numerous others). The largest two dialects of Kurdish are Kurmanji, which has at the very least 20 million speakers (spoken by the Kurds of Turkey and Syria, as well as by some Kurds from Iraq and Iran), and Sorani (spoken by the Kurds in Iraq and Iran). 

I would propose adding Kurmanji first because it is the one in the most danger at the moment, but I would not in any way be against Sorani either. Furthermore, Kurmanji is written in Latin script, which should make it easier to add for Duolingo. 

The volunteers are also there and all ready to contribute, and so the only requirement remaining for the performance of this great historic duty is for some Duolingo employee to approve of our petition. I don't think it is too much to ask for when Duolingo has Klingon and High Valyrian (no offense to Star Trek and Valyria). 

Adding this language course, for Turkish speakers in the best scenario, would do much to prevent the Kurdish youth in Turkey from losing their language. The language also holds importance for people who are not Turks or Kurds, because the Kurds are the fourth largest group in the Middle East and by every passing day grow more and more important in the politics of the region, this is unfortunately coupled with the fact that learning materials online for Kurdish, as opposed to Arabic, Farsi, and Turkish, are either non-existent or very limited.

You can follow @duolingokurdi on Twitter for more updates, as well as for extending your support of our cause to another platform, as those are the guys who will most likely be contributing to a prospective course. They are also the people that inspired me to make this petition, so a personal thanks to those wonderful people and their wonderful initiative.

Also, please consider that while a signature is much-appreciated, and while I can tell you with much confidence that to me personally one signature means as many as 100,000 signatures, sharing this with everyone you know and everywhere you can would do much more, because that way our petition will have a chance of growing exponentially and in consequence our cause will have a chance of prevailing. This I in particular implore of our Kurdish brothers and sisters, because for them I believe merely signing is being too passive, and that they have a duty to do their best in ensuring that this succeeds. So, here is the link: https://change.org/kurdishduolingo

Relevant Duolingo forum thread: https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/9460042