International Tribunal must investigate war crimes committed by the Turkish army
- Society for Threatened Peoples
- 03/11/2007 00:00:00
Göttingen, 2 November 2007
International Tribunal must investigate war crimes committed by the Turkish army and the PKK!
The Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) is the result of 70-year long radical persecution of Kurds by Turkish Army and authorities
After the threatening through the Turkish army and government against the peaceful Iraqi state of Kurdistan, Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) has demanded the calling of an international tribunal for the investigation of the war crimes committed by both the Turkish army and the PKK in the last two decades.
Without the merciless repression and persecution of the Kurds in south eastern Anatolia by the Turkish government and military since the end of World War Two, the 15 million Kurds living in this area would have experienced a completely different lifestyle. Instead of the totalitarian Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK), democratic Kurdish institutions, parties, unions, publishing houses, and media might have been able to develop. However, the Turkish army and government would have systematically anticipated their founding by imprsioning, killing, or torturing Kurdish intellectuals.
STP General-Secretary Tilman Zuelch demanded that “an international tribunal now has to investigate the death of 37,000 Turkish citizens – 6,000 citizens with Turkish nationality and 31,000 with Kurdish nationality“. An analysis of this situation would show that both the Turkish army and the PKK are responsible for war crimes against civilians and prisoners. Additionally, the tribunal would have to explain why 1,719 out of 3,835 actual and alleged Kurdish resistance fighters or supporters, have – in most cases – been imprisoned for ten years or more without a substantial verdict. Additionally, the tribunal would have to find out why not a single member of theTurkish military has been imprisoned for war crimes against humanity. Furthermore, an investigation into the destruction of 3,876 Kurdish villages, flight and internal displacement of about two million Kurds from south eastern Anatolia would also need to be addressed.
Zuelch explained that the conclusions of such an international tribunal would not only confront theTurkish with the extent to which the Kurds in Turkey have been perscueted within the last 80 years, but the international public as well. Key points of this confronting past are the three genocidal attacks against the Kurdish people by Turkish leader Kemal Atatürk in his effort to put down the Kurdish rebellions in Sheik Sait (a region of Diyarbakir) in 1925, at the Ararat Mountain in 1930, and around Dersim/Tunceli in 1937. During the attacks in the region around Dersim poisonous gas was also used. Hundreds of thousands of people died in these attacks, and another half a million people were deported to west Turkey.
Zuelch further explained that STP is appealing to the parties, government, and army of Turkey, as well as the Turkish institutions in Germany and German-Turkish members of the European Parliament like Vural Öger and Cem Özdemir to publicly face the persecution and annihilation of the Kurds, to condemn both, and to stand up for absolute equality of the Kurdish people in Turkish Kurdistan. Only then can the condemnation and overcoming of the PKK’s totalitarian code of practice become credible and the current Turkish threats against Iraqi-Kurdistan, which has developed as a model of coexistence between people of different nationalities and religious communities, become superfluous.
Please do not hesitate to contact Tilman Zuelch, STP General-Secretary, for further questions and enquiries under +49 151 15 30 9 888.
Zuelch has visited Iraqi-Kurdistan three times since 2004 and is the editor of several books and documentations on the Kurd issue. Society for Threatened Peoples is present in the Iraqi Federal State of Kurdistan with an office in its capital Arbil.
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
- Society for Threatened Peoples
- 03/11/2007 00:00:00