Please visit the Kurds and the Christians in south-eastern Turkey! Demand the release of political prisoners! Save the Syrian Orthodox monastery of Mor Gabriel!

Dear Chancellor.

On the occasion of your official visit to the Republic of Turkey on Sunday, I would like to appeal to you – on behalf of the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) – to take a stand for the rights of the Kurdish minority and the Christian community in Turkey. Please visit Diyarbakir, the unofficial capital of the Kurds in the southeast of the country, to show solidarity with the Kurdish population there. By doing so, you could emphasize that the German public supports further negotiations between the Turkish government and Kurdish representatives, hoping for successful peace talks. The Turkish and the Kurdish people in Turkey – and also in Germany – are longing for a peaceful and just solution to the Kurdish question and for reconciliations.

Please use the opportunity of your meetings with leading political representatives in Turkey to demand an immediate release of all the political prisoners in the country. About 7,000 Kurds are imprisoned in Turkish jails for political reasons and without any evidence – solely based on the accusation of being members of the banned Kurdish Labor Party, the PKK.

We regret the fact that the Turkish government is not willing to grant the Kurds a right to self-government or linguistic and cultural equality in their own country. While Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan calls for a network of Turkish schools in Germany for the children of immigrants from Turkey – about half of whom are Kurdish – the 15 million Kurds in Turkey don't have any Kurdish schools at all. Kurdish should be accepted as an official language and school-language for the areas inhabited mainly by Kurds, also as an important prerequisite to put an end to the Turkish-Kurdish conflict which has claimed at least 45,000 lives since 1984.

It would also be an important gesture towards the 90,000 Syrian Orthodox Christians in Germany, if you, Mrs. Merkel, would pay a visit to the Syrian Orthodox Christians in southeastern Anatolia. The Assyrians/Arameans who came to Germany as war refugees or religious fugitives – and have meanwhile managed to integrate themselves very well – are trying to preserve their language and their culture in Tur Abdin, their historic homeland. But even their last monasteries there are threatened. The monastery of Mor Gabriel, for example, is fighting for survival, because there are attempts to confiscate the monastery's land. Mor Gabriel is one of the oldest Christian monasteries worldwide – and one of the few remaining religious centers of the Syrian Orthodox Christians in Turkey. Please help to preserve this important religious heritage!

Sincerely,

Tilman Zülch, Secretary General