The Association of Turks in Serbia has launched an initiative for the introduction of the Turkish language in Serbian schools.
The class will be an optional course beginning at fifth grade level. It’s seen as a beneficial move for language rights as well as promoting cultural diplomacy.
“Ali Sahovic, a representative of the Association of Turks in Serbia, told SETimesthat the association is conducting a survey among parents and students to determine if there is sufficient interest to organise classes in Turkish.” and according the the Serbian government, more than 65,000 children took classes in minority languages in 53 municipalities throughout Serbia in 2013. [source]
Serbian is a standardised form of Serbo-Croatian, a Slavic language (Indo-European), of the South Slavic subgroup. Other standardized forms of Serbo-Croatian are Bosnian, Croatian, and Montenegrin. Turkish, sometimes referred to as Istanbul Turkish, is the most widely spoken of the Turkic languages, with around 10–15 million native speakers in Southeastern Europe and 55–60 million native speakers in Western Asia. Speakers are located predominantly in Turkey, with smaller groups in Germany, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Northern Cyprus, Greece, the Caucasus, other parts of Europe and Central Asia.