Demands of Kurds as Prerequisites for the Accession of Turkey to the EU

DEHAP, People's Democratic Party, which represents Kurdish opinions, has five main demands as conditions for the accession of Turkey to EU (Interview 2004):

1) The existence and the rights of the Kurdish people and other minorities living in Turkey has to be recognised in the Turkish constitution.

2) Legislation on political parties and elections should be democratised so that it will be possible to establish parties, which can represent different nationalities of Turkey, not only Turkish. The 10 % national threshold on elections has to be abolished so that also smaller parties can access the Parliament.

3) All kinds of restrictions concerning the use and teaching of and in the Kurdish language and other mother tongues other than Turkish have to be abolished. The use of the "Kurdish letters" e.g. x, w and q in Kurdish names and in other connections has to be allowed.

4) The "village guard" system should be lifted after necessary economic and social measures are taken, for the continuation of the temporary peace atmosphere in the region of Southeast Turkey. Special forces should leave the region and the unlawful, illegal forces should be completely abolished.

5) The problems of people who have been forced to migrate from their home villages (internally displaced people) have to be solved. Displaced villagers should be helped to return to their villages, and should not be forced to live in other places and their losses should be compensated.

The militant wing of the Kongra-Gel (former PKK) has informed that if steps are undertaken to fulfil these demands they will give up their arms. As a condition to this is a general amnesty which has to comprise all guerrillas who have been involved in armed fights, all people who have fled the country for political reasons and other politically active Kurds.

The aim of DEHAP is that in the beginning of the negotiations on Turkey's accession to the EU representatives of Kurdish people have to be listened. If the date for accession will be set before the above conditions have been considered, the Turkish state will close itself without securing rights for Kurds. In general the demands above are the same demands and conditions that were repeated in most discussions during our trip. They, all of them or part of them or some more, were repeated in discussions in the offices of human rights organisations, women's organisations, DEHAP and of mayors representing DEHAP.

There were detailed demands on freedom of expression, freedom of press, freedom of association, freedom to establish parties, freedom to use the Kurdish language in teaching of children in schools and on TV and in radio broadcastings etc.

The possibility to use funds collected by taxation in the local area is an important question too. Now 95 % of tax assets have to be sent to government and only 5 % are returned to the cities and communes. The possibility that the government is willing to give back more of the tax funds to areas where support for DEHAP is smaller has to be taken into consideration. In some areas DEHAP is given almost 100 % of votes.