Situation of minorities

The rights of the Kurds in the EC's "2004 Regular Report on Turkey" are named as minority rights. Many Kurdish organisations critizise the term "minority" - they don't see themselves as a minority in Turkey, but as the majority in Kurdistan. The Kurdistan National Congress critizises the report for using the term "Kurds" instead of "Kurdish people". According to them Kurds are a people (Colak 2004).

This opinion was repeated to me several times in South-East Turkey. For example, the representatives of the teachers' trade union Egitim Sen in Diyarbakir told me that they do not accept the EC opinion that Kurds are a minority. Kurds should be regarded as a people, a nation and they should have the same rights in Turkey as Turks. Egitim Sen has demanded that every child should get education in state schools in his/her mother language. Because of this, prosecutors started a closure process against it. The situation healed only when Egitim Sen received much support from various organisations in EU countries.

The EC sees the human rights in Turkey only as the rights of individuals. For many Kurdish organisations this is not enough: Kurds should not be regarded as a group of individuals, but as a people where the rights of the group are based on their mutual rights as a nation, not on the individual rights of the members.