"Solve your problem with the Kurds at last instead of bringing war to the peaceful Iraqi Kurdistan!”

The Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) appealed today to the government of Turkey under Recep Tayyip Erdogan to finally settle its conflict with the Kurds in Turkey. "Only when Turkey releases the 3,835 Kurdish prisoners, begins the reconstruction of the 3,876 villages destroyed by the Turkish army and begins a comprehensive programme of reintegration of the two million internally displaced Kurds and places the Kurdish language on a level with Turkish in the administration and in the school system of Southeast Anatolia – only then will it remove the ground from under the totalitarian Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK)”, said the President of the GfbV International, Tilman Zülch. This is a much more effective measure than threatening the neighbouring country of Iraq with the invasion of Turkish troops.

"We accuse the Erdogan government of bowing to the pressure of the Turkish military”, said Zülch. "The Turkish army would with its attack not only hit the PKK, but would also destroy the only refuge in Iraq for Kurdish, Turkmen, Arab-Sunni, Shiite, Assyro-Chaldaic and Mandaean refugees. The autonomous federal state of Kurdistan has taken at least 30,000 Christian refugees from South Iraq. Since 2003 there have been no more bombings than in Spain and Great Britain. The region has become a model for the Near East with its tolerance and religious minorities.”

The GfbV has always condemned the totalitarian methods of the PKK in the Near East and its infiltration of and threat to the Kurdish community in Germany just as much as the war crimes of the Turkish army.

"Those who suppress and persecute the Kurdish people will try to destroy this model in North Iraq”, warned Zülch. "We must not forget that Turkish generals and nationalists are dreaming of annexing the North Iraqi towns of Mosul and Kirkuk. Their real wish is to prevent a plebiscite in the province of Kirkuk, which has a great deal of oil, because this would favour the unification with the Iraqi autonomous Kurdish region.”