Please do not abandon the Kurds!

Ankara must return to talks and allow aid for Kurdish enclaves in northern Syria!

Dear Madam Chancellor,

we implore you to use your meeting with the Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan this coming weekend in Istanbul as an opportunity to urge the Turkish government to put a stop to their policies of oppression and persecution against the Kurds in their own country, as well as in neighbouring Syria. Please urge them to return to talks immediately, and to seek a peaceful solution to the Kurdish situation.

The government’s logistical support of Islamist groups is not only harming the people of Syria, Iraq, Libya and Egypt, but is also preventing peaceful co-existence within Turkey. The bloody attacks in Ankara last Saturday (10.10), with over 100 dead and more than 500 injured, could very well be seen as a result of this policy.

Our human rights organization shares the concern of the ‘Democratic People’s Party’ (HDP) that Erdogan is responsible for the resurgence of violence between the Turkish army and the Kurdish PKK. ‘We were so close to a solution, peace was so close, but Erdogan has dashed all our hopes,’ claimed HDP Chief, Selahattin Demirtas, in a newspaper interview before the terrible attacks in Ankara.

Further escalation of the violence in Turkey must be stopped. The Turkish president ended peace talks with the Kurds months ago and is now returning to violence: democratically elected Kurdish representatives are being persecuted, PKK positions in remote Iraqi Kurdistan are being bombed, and the border crossing to the Kurdish areas of northern Syria - where hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons, Christian Assyrians/Syrians, Yazidis, Armenians, Kurds and Arabs sought protection from the terror of Islamic State (IS) - remain sealed off. Erdogan is now blatantly threatening the Kurds in their neighbouring country. Germany and Europe simply cannot tolerate the Turkish government’s arbitrary and violent acts! Please do not abandon the Kurds and other minorities - even if Erdogan is calculatedly using the many refugees, whose journey west he could prevent, as leverage in order to force Germany and Europe to silently accept his hostile policy against the Kurds. This is causing violence in Turkey to spiral: the PKK is already responsible for bloody acts of revenge.

Dear Madam Chancellor, we ask that you emphatically push for the Turkish borders to be opened for lifesaving aid deliveries to the free Kurdish areas of northern Syria. If this fails, many more people will be forced to flee to Europe!

We would be very grateful if you could inform us about your efforts.

Best wishes,

Tilman Zülch, President of the International Society for Threatened Peoples

Header photo: http://www.glynlowe.com/angela_merkel