To the editorial staff, National Section, Yeni Özgür Politika;

Dear Sirs,

Thank you for the information provided and for your request for a statement regarding the PKK’s peace offer to the Turkish government on August 23, 2006. We are happy to respond to your request and appreciate this expression of your trust and confidence. We welcome the fact that the PKK wants peace and believe that the organisation intends to move towards engagement in a democratic dialogue.

It has long been our view that the Turkish army’s persecution of the Kurds in a campaign of repression that has continued unremittingly since the end of the Second World War was bound to provoke military opposition within Turkey. But we have never regarded the resistance movement as a totalitarian organisation under a single leader acting without pity or compassion.

The war between the Turkish Army and the PKK has had disastrous consequences. More than 3000 villages have been destroyed and more than 2 million farmers have been forced to abandon their homes. 2000 Kurds are still held in custody on political charges, despite the fact that most of them have never personally borne arms.

The Society for Threatened Peoples calls on the Turkish Government and the Turkish army likewise, still the main source of power in Turkey, immediately to release the 2000 political prisoners, to rebuild the 3000 destroyed villages and to organise the return home of all displaced persons. The army, government and judiciary must act immediately to meet these demands, whatever the outcome of any peace initiative on the part of the PKK, because the Kurdish victims should be entitled without exception to the same treatment as Turkish citizens. Parity of treatment includes equal status for the Kurdish and Turkish languages in schools and universities, all areas of official activity, the media and public life generally.

All Turkish politicians and generals and PKK officials responsible for war crimes must be brought to account before an independent international tribunal. The International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague currently investigating and punishing violations of human rights in Bosnia offers a useful model for an equivalent tribunal dealing with Turkey and Turkish Kurdistan.

The Society for Threatened Peoples calls on the PKK to reconstitute itself as a democratic organisation, repudiate all war crimes and criminal sanctions against its own members and elect its leadership and representative structures by free and secret ballot.

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Tilman Zuelch

General Secretary, Society for Threatened Peoples

N.B. This statement must not be reproduced other than in its entirety and no excerpts may be used. We reserve the right to circulate a copy of this letter to any appropriate Kurdish, Assyrian Aramaeic, Kurdish Yezidi, Armenian, Turkish, German institutions, organisations and individuals, and we thank you again for your kind interest.