Appeal to the Prime Minister, Minister for Integration and all members of the Hessian Parliament

Dear Mr. Koch,

Dear Mr. Hahn,

Ladies and gentlemen,

Our human rights organisation welcomes the initiative of the Province of Hesse to set up a partnership with a region in Turkey. We would be glad if a decision were reached embracing all parties. You are going to Turkey at a time when government, the media, Parliament and other institutions are at last really striving for a solution to the Kurdish problem, which has been the cause of so many conflicts and so much bloody fighting. The Province of Hesse could precisely in this matter set a sign for peace, a matter which European institutions like the European Union and the Council of Europe have been very much concerned.

The city of Diyarbakir in south-eastern Anatolia is the economic and political centre for the approximately 15 million Kurds in Turkey. The influx of Kurdish refugees, who have during the Turkish-Kurdish war been driven out of their villages, has caused the population of this city to grow from 150,000 in the 1970s to more than 666,000 in the year 2007. Some 1.5 million people live in the 14 districts of the province of Diyarbakir, with a total area of 15,355 sq km. Since the Turkish central government rules the whole area of this province, which is inhabited mainly by Kurds, from the city of Diyarbakir, it has a relatively good infrastructure with an airport, a university and many other institutions.

The Province of Hesse could with its diverse possibilities provide impetus for the development of this commercially interesting region with the nearby oil reserves and the increasingly important neighbours of Iran, Azerbaijan and Iraq with its own prospering autonomous Kurdish region. At the same time Hesse could do much to encourage the federal forms of co-existence of different language groups and regions in Turkey. It is important to bear in mind that in a number of European states various forms of self-government have solved ethnic conflicts and put an end to bloody conflicts. In this area an important part could be played by Hessian communities, trade unions, employers’ organisations and other institutions.

There are already good contacts between Diyarbakir and some Hessian towns and communities. At the beginning of May 2009 a delegation of local politicians from Giessen visited some Kurdish villages in the region inhabited by Kurdish and Assyrian Aramaic Christians. A partnership could be of great benefit for the Christians living in the Kurdish-speaking region.

The diverse pluralist initiatives growing up in the Diyarbakir region need an atmosphere of freedom to be able to function effectively. All serious politicians of town and region are linked by hopes for a partnership between Hesse and this region of Turkey. The present Mayor of Diyarbakir, Osman Baydemir (38), believes that this contribution from Hesse will lead the Turkish legal machine to refrain from repressive measures against individuals and institutions and that constitutional procedures will then gradually become established. This Mayor, a member of the pro-Kurdish party DTP, would have to spend some 284 years in prison if the maximum penalty were to be applied in all the 200 cases at present being brought against him. His crime: he is concerned with a peaceful solution of the Kurdish question. Baydemir was re-elected in March 2009 with 64% of the votes. The diversity of the Hessian party system could certainly help to encourage the differentiation of the part-political spectrum in the region of Diyarbakir.

Yours Truly,

Tilman Zülch, Chairperson of the German section of the Society for Threatened Peoples STP

Dr. Kamal Sido, Near-east consultant of the STP