Open letter to the Governor of Baden-Wuerttemberg, Mr. Winfried Kretschmann

You did not fulfil your responsibility towards the victims of the Ataturk regime.

15 million Kurds are still waiting for equal rights!

Dear Prime Minister,

you chose to set a clear sign for religious freedom during your official visit to Turkey. You visited his Holiness Bartholomew, the Ecumenical patriarch – and our human rights organization welcomes this sign to the tiny Christian minority in the country.

However, we regret that you did not meet a representative of the 15 million Turkish Kurds. This gesture could have set a good example for their linguistic, cultural and political equality. During your stay in Turkey, several hundred Kurdish political prisoners were on hunger strike to campaign for these equal rights.

It may seem honorable that you advocated for the Turkish language to be taught at German schools – but as long as there aren’t even elementary schools for the Kurdish people in Turkey, the Society for Threatened Peoples would like to advise you to emphasize other concerns.

Like many other visitors to Turkey, you also visited the Ataturk Mausoleum in Ankara. After the genocide on about 1.5 million Armenians and up to 500,000 Christian Assyrians, committed by the “young Turks”, this statesman continued to expel Christian people from the country. At least 200,000 Christian inhabitants of the harbor town Smyrna (now Izmir) and Eastern Thrace – in the European part of Turkey – fell victim to mass killings. At least two million Greek Orthodox, Armenian, Assyrian/Aramaic and Arab Christians were forced to leave Ionia, Pontus, Cappadocia or the Sandjak Alexandretta / Iskenderun. The ratio of Christians to the overall population of Turkey fell from 20% to 0.1%. Kamal Ataturk also battled the Kurdish opposition movement mercilessly. Tens of thousands of Kurds lost their lives at that time.

For you, being Governor of Baden-Wuerttemberg, it would have been a truly statesmanlike task to also try to pay respect to the victims while visiting the Ataturk-Mausoleum.

The Green party is known to be passionate about declarations in favor of the persecuted and disadvantaged people of the world, so it would be good to also find these ambitions in practical politics.

Sincerely,

Tilman Zülch, the STP’s General Secretary