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EDICOLA / KIOSK | LADINBolzano/Bozen, Göttingen, Berlin, 4. October 2006
Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel must stand up against the
continuing discrimination of the 15 million Kurds and for the
equal status of the Kurdish language. This was the plea of the
Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) to the Prime Minister on
Wednesday. "The Kurdish question in Turkey can only be solved if
the Kurdish language is treated equally with Turkish in the
Kurdish-speaking area of the south-east of the country in schools
and universities, in the mass media and the other fields of
public life", says the letter of the human rights organisation to
Ms Merkel, who is travelling to Turkey on Thursday. The
recognition of Kurdish as an official language has only been
given symbolic value and in practice there have been so far no
positive results.
The continuing repression of Kurdish journalists, writers or
politically involved people in public life, who have dared to
exercise the right to free speech, is "unbearable", criticised
the GfbV with reference to the court case against 56 mayors from
the Kurdish area. They have been taken to court on account of a
letter written to the government of Denmark, in which they ask
for the Kurdish satellite station Roj-TV not to be forbidden,
which is what Turkey wants. The Kurds are still being treated as
third class people by Turkish provincial authorities, courts and
members of the military stationed in the Kurdish region. Turkey
must also stop the boycott measures against the federal province
of Kurdistan in neighbouring Iraq and no longer isolate it.
The GfbV also calls for the recognition of the Assyrian-Aramaic
Christians, the Alevites and the Yezidi as equally entitled
religious bodies.