Obama must bring Ankara to peace talks with the Kurds

Barack Obama must bring the Turkish government to begin talks with the political representatives of the Kurds in Parliament for a peaceful solution to the Kurdish question. With this appeal the Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) wrote to the US President on Friday. The human rights organisation also asked Obama to speak out for the release of the 3,835 Kurdish political prisoners. Most of them have been in prison in Turkey for more than 20 years. About half of them have never had a court case.

"Turkey will find no peace until Kurdish identity is recognized,” is the message in the letter of the GfbV to Obama. For the Kurds it is important that the equality of their language and culture be recognized. There is to date not a single Kurdish school for the 15 – 20 million Kurds in Turkey. They make up at least 20 percent of the population.

The GfbV pointed out in its letter to Obama, who is expected in Ankara on Sunday, that there is no freedom of religion for the communities of the Alevites, Yezidi and Syrian orthodox Christians. The religion of the majority, Sunni Islam, has the function of a state religion. Tens of thousands of the Yezidi and Syrian Orthodox have been driven out in the past decades, while the few thousand remaining are subjected to constant discrimination and persecution. The Alevites, who number about 20 million, are subject to discrimination.

In this connection the GfbV draws attention to the demand for the USA to bring the Turkish government to cease denying the genocide against approximately 1.5 million Armenians between 1915 and 1918.

The Cyprus question is also dealt with in the letter from the human rights organisation. This dangerous, smouldering conflict between Turkey and the Republic of Cyprus as a member of the European Union must be solved urgently. Some 200,000 Greek, Armenian, Latin and Maronite Cypriots were driven out by the Turkish army in 1974 and nearly 100,000 Turks from the mainland were moved illegally to the occupied northern part of the island. "We beg you, Mr. President, to step in for a speedy solution of the Cyprus question for the sake of human rights and the rights of Cypriots of all ethnic groups who were expelled or forcibly resettled, so that reunification can be achieved.”