Society for Threatened Peoples sees no progress for 15 million Kurds

"For the 15 million Kurds in the southeast of Turkey there has been so far no significant progress in the matter of language rights and human rights”, said the president of the Society for Threatened Peoples International (GfbV), Tilman Zülch, in Göttingen with regard to the scandalous verdict against 20 Kurds in the town of Siirt. Because they had used on their publicly shown posters for the Kurd New Year’s celebrations the two Kurdish letters Q and W they were each sentenced to fines amounting to 61 Euros. The two letters Q and W do not occur in the Turkish alphabet.

"While the European Union quite unjustly discovers only a few gaps in the law in the attempts of the Turkish government to provide equality of treatment of the Kurdish language in southeast Anatolia, Turkish courts, police and security organs constantly undermine with all kinds of new laws and regulations all attempts of Kurdish institutions and personalities to establish the use of the Kurdish language”, criticised Zülch. "The Kurdish language is still not allowed to be used with the authorities, any more than it is allowed in the election campaign. In the state school system Kurdish just does not exist to the present day. The distribution of newspapers in Kurdish is regularly hindered, Kurdish language courses in private buildings are paralysed by regulations on the most ridiculous grounds.” So there are many examples of prohibitions with reasons such as "The staircase is too narrow” or "Notification of the course was not given in time”.

"In the light of these conditions we are wondering why the EU, the governments of the member states and also many German-speaking and other European media are prepared to rubber-stamp the will for reform of the Turkish government and the influential Turkish military forces”, said Zülch.