Kurdish National Congress of North America
P.O. Box 90823, Nashville, TN 37209-USA
Ms. Kariane Westrheim
Chair of the EUTCC Brussels 6th International EUTCC Conference 2010
EU Turkey Civic Commission
European Parliament, Brussels
February 3, 2010
Dear Ms. Westrheim:
The Kurdish National Congress of North America extends to you our best wishes and congratulations on holding the sixth intentional conference on the EU-Turkey and the Kurds. Your effort in bringing the Kurdish issue in Turkey to the attention of world community is historic in context, and it is highly revered by our people in all parts of Kurdistan.
For Turkey to fulfill its promising dream of becoming a member of the democratic European Union, Turkey needs to recognize the reality in which Turkey lives—that it is a mosaic of various nationalities. Therefore, all nationalities must be equal before the law.
In recent years, Turkey has tirelessly been striving to join the EU, and reconcile its position in the Middle East and Islamic World—it has been talking about the rights of the Palestinian people and protecting the lives of Palestinian children, while internally, Turkey has been denying the right to Kurdish children to speak their mother language.
Turkey is still bound to a racist Constitution—a Constitution that considers all who hold Turkish citizenship as “Turks” and not citizens of Turkey. Such a narrow political mind set has kept Turkey in the cycle of hate, fear, and distrust. Consequently, Turkey’s motto for reform has been nothing but empty political slogans. Turkey has yet to take any real measure to amend the Constitution where the rights and integrity of every citizen are enshrined. Hence, Turkey needs to harmonize its internal socio-political culture and recognize the Kurdish identity prior to putting the badge of democracy on its collar.
The Kurdish opposition parties across the board have been calling the Turkish government to end this animosity between the Turks and Kurds and find a real political solution, but because the Turkish political mentality has been nurtured under such a myopic Constitution, the Kurdish calls have not been received well on the Turkish end. The Kurdish issue in Turkey may never be resolved unless the Turkish authorities show more sincerity in their approaches to respect human dignity of all citizens of all cultural and ethnic backgrounds.
Once again we wish you all the success for the conference and hope that your efforts will bear fruit in finding a realistic and peaceful political solution for the Kurdish problem in Turkey.
Sincerely yours,
Kirmanj Gundi
Kirmanj Gundi
President
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