Unfortunately, Merkel fails to send a clear enough sign of support for the Christians in Turkey, but pays respect to Ataturk, the "enemy of the minorities".

The Secretary General of the Society for Threatened Peoples, Tilman Zülch, criticized the visit of German Chancellor Angela Merkel to Turkey to be a "missed opportunity" to show commitment for the rights of the Kurdish and Christian communities. Zülch explained as follows:

"The Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) welcomes the fact that German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited Cappadocia and also emphasized Turkey's Christian past by meeting religious leaders in Turkey. However, our human rights organization does regret that Merkel failed to address the prevailing problems of the local Christian communities – even though there are about 90,000 very well integrated Christian Assyrians / Aramaeans living in Germany as war refugees or religious fugitives. They had expected more than only a symbolic meeting between their Chancellor and Christian representatives in faraway Ankara or Istanbul. They would have preferred Merkel to visit representatives of their ethnic group in Tur Abdin, traditional homeland of the Syrian Orthodox Christians in south-eastern Turkey, or at the besieged monastery of Mor Gabriel. For the Syrian Orthodox Christians who are committed to the preservation of their language and culture in Turkey, a meeting like this would have been a sign of great importance.

For our human rights organization – which takes sides with the victims of crimes against humanity and demands perpetrators to be named – it is inexplicable why Merkel laid a wreath at the grave of Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey. After the "Young Turks" committed genocide against about 1.5 million Armenians, the persecution and extermination of minorities was continued during his tenure. At least 200,000 Christian inhabitants of the harbor town of Smyrna (now Izmir) and of Eastern Thrace (in the European part of Turkey), became victims of these mass killings. At least two million Greek Orthodox, Armenian, Assyrian /Aramaic and Arab Christians were forced to leave Ionia, Pontus, Cappadocia and the Sanjak of Alexandretta / Iskenderun. The number of Christian people in Turkey was reduced from 20 percent to 0.1 percent. Kamal Ataturk also mercilessly suppressed Kurdish resistance movements. Tens of thousands of Kurds lost their lives at that time.

Prime Minister Erdogan had reminded the Chancellor about the five million Turks living in the EU at present. We would like to emphasize that at least one third of them are Kurdish refugees, their numbers steadily increasing because of the continued persecution and oppression of the Kurdish people. Besides, the number of voters among the 1.1 million Kurds in Germany has increased to 400,000 people who elect their representatives for the German municipalities and federal state parliaments."