Question of Identity and Attitudes

The question of the Identity of people living in Turkey is very important and has to be considered. School children have to start their school day with a "prayer": "Ne mutlu türküm diyene", which means something like "I am happy when I can say that I am a Turk". The Kurdish children seldom know the Turkish language when they start school. That is naturally a great problem. The policy of the state of Turkey creates problems for the government itself through this kind of practice It is clear that children learn that the state drives them to tell lies. For teenagers it is especially very hard to start their school day with this "prayer" and often they try to stay at home.

There is a great problem to change the attitudes of Turkish people and Kurdish people towards each other. Many Kurds think that all Turkish people are inhumane and many Turkish people think the same about Kurds because of the 15 years of fighting in Southeast Turkey. Some kind of a truth and reconciliation commission and process, as in South Africa, is clearly needed in the country. It will be a long process, but to start the process should also be an accession criterion for Turkey.

Turkey has made many changes in the legislation which have been partly implemented in praxis. However the situation is not yet at all satisfactory. Especially the government has to totally assert its control over the military and to remove arbitrariness from all levels of administrative bodies and inside the police organization and the military. The government has to start a huge training process for all of these people.