Army leaders stick to Kemalist state ideology: Hopes of a peaceful solution of the Kurdish question vanish – Society for Threatened Peoples warns of escalation

In Turkey the hopes of the Kurdish movement of a peaceful solution of the Kurdish question have vanished as a result of the intervention of the army leaders. „General Ilker Basburg emphasised in his statement yesterday the guiding principle of the late dictator Kemal Atatürk „One people, one language, one culture”, thus making clear the power position in Turkey. „The army in the background dominates politics”, said the chair of the Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV), Tilman Zülch, on Wednesday in Göttingen. With the emphasis of this state ideology the magnificent promises to the Kurdish people of the Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, have been set at nought. The violent conflicts of the Turkish state with its 15 million Kurdish citizens could now flare up again, warned the human rights expert.

Erdogan had met the chair, Ahmet Türk, of the pro-Kurdish party DTP which is represented in Parliament together with US President Barack Obama at the beginning of April. The Turkish Prime Minister had surprised everyone by offering to talk about the equality of the Kurdish language and possibly lso about autonomy for the region in the east of the country which is inhabited mainly by Kurds.