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PRESS RELEASE of the Society for Threatened
Peoples
Göttingen, 12th February 2008
“The Turkish people is a people of friendship and tolerance”...
“Wherever
it goes, it brings only love and joy”... “Assimilation is a
crime against
humanity”
Prime Minister Recep Tayip Erdogan during his visit to Germany
in February
2008
Turkey. Europe’s forerunner in imposing compulsory “Turkishness”
– Turkish
daily life for 15 million Kurds: torture, arrest, murder, mass
expulsion -
compulsory “Turkishness”
The General Secretary for Threatened Peoples (GfbV), Tilman
Zülch, has
labelled Turkey as Europe’s forerunner in thrusting Islam.
In no other
European country are the languages and cultures of minorities
so grossly
suppressed and persecuted as in the homeland of the Turkish
prime
minister.
The Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayip Erdogan, is calling
for schools
for Turkish migrants in Germany, but there is not in Turkey
one single
Kurdish school for a people who were living in the country
one thousand
years before the settlement by Turks and who are always calling
for the
opening of a Kurdish school of their own. Estimates of the
GfbV show that
for approximately three million Kurdish children in Turkish
Kurdistan at
least 10,000 schools are needed. In these in the opinion of
international
experts on minorities the Kurdish language and history should
be taught at
all levels besides the Turkish official language. As a comparison:
in
Iraqi Kurdistan (about 4 million inhabitants) there are 5,303
Kurdish
schools, and among them 58 Assyro-Aramaic and – in Arbil –
16 Turkmen
schools.
In Turkey Kurdish publications are forbidden and their dissemination
is
prevented by the Turkish authorities, the military and the
courts. The
publication of a single Kurdish daily newspaper “Azadiya Welt”
is being
constantly prevented and its distribution in public is strictly
forbidden.
Nearly all those working for it have spent at least a year
in Turkish
prisons. Its editor, Vedat Kursun, was arrested a few days
ago, on 6^th
February 2008, and is still in custody. Hundreds of Kurdish
authors have
been sentenced in Turkey or have been charged because they
have written
about Kurdish history, culture or language. A book was recently
forbidden
by the author Yilmaz Camlibel, who lives in Germany, which
tells the story
of one of the three Kurdish uprisings which was bloodily suppressed
by
Kemal Atatürk. About three million Kurdish refugees are still
not allowed
to return to their destroyed villages.
Tilman Zülch can be reached at (++49 (0)151 1530 9888.
Für Menschenrechte. Weltweit.
Gesellschaft für bedrohte Völker / Society for Threatened Peoples
P.O. Box 20 24 - D-37010 Göttingen/Germany
Nahostreferat/ Middle East Desk
Dr. Kamal Sido - Tel: +49 (0) 551 49906-18 - Fax: +49 (0) 551
58028
E-Mail: nahost@gfbv.de - www.gfbv.de
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