Please advocate for an opening of the Turkish-Syrian border to allow aid supplies! Ease the plight of the civilian population in Syria!

Dear Minister, 

The plight of the people in Syria is getting worse day by day. Because of the war, more and more civilians are suffering from food shortages and a lack of medical care. Since the local infrastructure has broken down almost completely, the urgently needed help must be organized from abroad.

It is especially the IDPs who are in need – those who fled from the disputed territories and sought protection in calmer regions, for example in the areas around Qamishli, Afrin and Ayn al-Arab in the north of the country. There are many ethnic and religious minorities among them: Kurds, Assyrian Aramaeans and Christian Armenians.

Despite the terrible plight of the people in Syria, the Turkish government has chosen to close the borders, so it is hardly possible for convoys to pass into the neighboring country. The reason for this inhumane decision lies in the fact that there is not trust in the newly formed Kurdish civilian administrations in the three Syrian regions mentioned above. They were formed by various local Kurdish parties, committees and social groups.

The government in Ankara has reliable connections to the autonomous region of Kurdistan in northern Iraq and also keeps up close economic relations. The dialogue between the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the Iraqi Kurdish President Masoud Barzani has helped to ease the situation regarding the relationship with the Kurdish population. The Turkish government would be well advised to cooperate with the three Kurdish regional governments of northern Syria. This could also help to improve the Kurdish-Turkish relations within Turkey.

Instead, the Turkish government is cooperating with armed Islamist extremists, allowing them to "infiltrate" to Syria through Turkish territory. Regarding the religious and ethnic diversity of the Syrian population, this one-sided preference for the Sunni opposition movement in Syria is worrying. These problematic occurrences in Egypt should also be a warning to Germany. .

Fortunately, Turkey is prepared to accept a large number of Syrian refugees – but there are quite a lot more people in Syria who are in desperate need. For many civilians, the food shortage has already become existence-threatening, especially since the dramatic increase in prices. For instance, the price of flour has tripled in the past few weeks, so that even basic food like bread has become rare and expensive. Sometimes, people are living only on bread for several days and especially large families in the border regions are threatened by hunger.

Kurdish committees are organizing the food supplies in the predominantly Kurdish areas, where some 500,000 IDPs from the fought over regions have sought protection. But now these areas are also running out of milk, flour, rice, baby diapers, blood donations and antibiotics.

We therefore appeal to you, dear Minister, to take up negotiations with the Turkish government about an opening of the border crossings Ayn al-Arab, Hamam / Afrin and Qamishli in northern Syria, to allow humanitarian aid and cross-border trade. This would be a first step in order to ease the situation of the civil population. The international community would surely appreciate an opening of the Syrian-Turkish border crossings – not only the ones leading to the three small Kurdish-inhabited regions – as a constructive humanitarian act.

We would be very grateful if you could keep us informed on your initiatives.

Sincerely,

Tilman Zülch, General Secretary