The Society for Threatened Peoples - International (GfbV-International) welcomes the proposal from the Turkish ruling party, AKP, for reforming the constitution, as this is a first step toward establishing a free democratic constitutional state. At the same time, the human rights organization regrets the failure of the proposed reform to address the Kurdish question as a central issue in Turkey. "At least the constitutional reform can to some extent overcome the authoritarian legacy of Turkey's founder, Kemal Atatürk, which led to so much suffering among this non-Turkish ethnic group," said the President of GfbV-International, Tilman Zülch.

The human rights activist called to mind the fact that during the notorious population exchange under Atatürk, 1.2 million Ionian and Thracian Greeks were driven out of the country, and that 100,000 Greeks and Armenians lost their lives in Smyrna (today Izmir). During his autarchy Atatürk also defeated three Kurdish uprisings, killing tens of thousands of Kurds and forcibly resettling several hundred thousands more within Turkey.

Among other things, the constitutional proposal from the AKP to be voted on this Sunday provides for stronger democratic control of the judiciary and of military leadership. Up to now, generals, authoritarian Kemalist parties and judges have had the power to suspend human and civil rights at any time. That is why constitutional reform is welcomed by many human and civil rights movements, as well as independent journalists, in Turkey – all of whom are assuming that further reforms must soon follow. The strongest Kurdish party, BDP, however, is calling for a boycott of the referendum.

"The only way to integrate the 15 million Kurds in Turkey and finally put an end to the persecution and repression of this and other ethnic groups will be through a federal constitution similar to what we have in Germany, or the creation of autonomous regions along the lines of the Spanish model," stated Zülch. "Our human rights organization points out once again that in today in Turkey, under Erdogan's rule, there are still more than 7,000 Kurds – among them 3,000 children – being held as political prisoners; in the southeast of the country, the main settlement area of the Kurds, not one single Kurdish school is permitted to exist; more than 3,876 villages have been reduced to rubble by the army, and even Turkish intellectuals are sentenced to lengthy prison terms just for publishing works that address Kurdish topics."

Translated by Elizabeth Crawford