KHRP is pleased to announce the publication of the latest issues of its biannual legal journal and quarterly newsletter.

Legal Review 16 covers the period from June to December 2009 and features news and updates relevant to the Kurdish regions, as well as summaries and analysis of relevant decisions of international, UK and U.S. Courts. Articles in this edition cover the procedural aspects of convention rights, the failings and threat of Turkey’s Anti-Terror laws regarding human rights standards, an overview of the lesser-known Council of Europe’s powers in respect of human rights, the factors to be considered for the enhancement of democracy and justice regarding the Kurdish issue, as well as the deficiencies of the regime of Refugee Status Determination and its impact on the status of Kurdish asylum seekers and Iraqi refugees.

KHRP remains extremely concerned by the violent fall-out in the Kurdish region of Turkey in the aftermath of last Friday’s decision by the Constitutional Court to close the pro-Kurdish Demokratik Toplum Partisi (Democratic Society Party, DTP).

Another two people were killed and 8 others were wounded yesterday, after a shopkeeper was said to have opened fire on demonstrators attacking his store in the town of Bulanık, in the mainly Kurdish province of Muş. According to reports, the shopkeeper is a village guard. The village guard system was established by the Turkish government in the mid-1980’s to act as a local militia in towns and villages, and has been widely condemned in and outside of Turkey for systematic human rights violations.  Throughout the period since major hostilities officially ended, the government has repeatedly stated that it plans to end the system, yet there are between 50,000 to 90,000 village guards currently employed by the State.

KHRP is deeply dismayed at today’s Constitutional Court ruling to close the Demokratik Toplum Partisi (Democratic Society Party, DTP)—the first pro-Kurdish party in the Turkish parliament in 14 years.

This decision has imposed on 37 members of the DTP, a five-year ban from politics and may pave the way for a wave of prosecutions against its members following the lifting of their Parliamentary immunity.

Politicians and parties representing the Kurds and Kurdish aspirations have faced systematic persecution in Turkey. Every party that has sought to articulate Kurdish concerns in a peaceful, democratic forum has contended with efforts by the establishment to restrict their activities, threaten their members and ultimately disband the party. This has included, among others, The People’s Labour Party (HEP), the Freedom and Democracy Party (ÖZDEP), Democratic Party (DEP), and pro-Kurdish People’s Democracy Party (HADEP).

Today, on International Human Rights Day, KHRP calls on the historic discrimination committed against minorities in the Kurdish regions to stop. It also asks that the international community act by urging the governments responsible to recognise the existence of its Kurdish ethnic and other minorities, and for Turkey and Syria, to guarantee Kurdish political and cultural rights in their constitutions.

Syrian Kurds make up the country’s largest non-Arab ethnic minority, yet the State has denied citizenship to at least 140,000 Syrian-born Kurds, who are denied equal access to socio-economic rights. As in Turkey, Kurdish identity has been systematically assailed, with the suppression of Kurdish language in schools, the refusal to register children with Kurdish names, the prohibition of Kurdish language material, and the removal of Kurdish place names.