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News > World

Turkey's Erdogan Sued by Germans over War Crimes Against Kurds

  • Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan attends a bilateral meeting with U.S. Vice President Joe Biden in Washington.

    Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan attends a bilateral meeting with U.S. Vice President Joe Biden in Washington. | Photo: Reuters

Published 28 June 2016
Opinion

The lawsuit highlights an incident in Sirnak, Turkey, where Kurdish residents were burned alive by the Turkish military.

Several German politicians and public figures have filed a lawsuit against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, alleging that he’s guilty of war crimes against his country's Kurdish minority, The Local reported.

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Lawyers Britta Eder and Petra Dervishaj told German state broadcaster ARD that their clients see it as “a moral duty to bring a suit here in Germany against the systematic war crimes taking place in Turkey.”

The 200-page suit details how Turkey has committed war crimes in Kurdish-majority regions of the country, with a particular focus on the city of Cizre, Sirnak. NGOs say around 178 people were killed back in February while taking shelter in a basement from Turkish artillery fire.

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Their bodies were later found burned, the suit claims. According to eyewitnesses, the military poured gasoline into the cellar and set it alight. Other eyewitnesses said that the soldiers shot and killed the civilians before burning the building.

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Those involved in bringing the suit forward include two people who have survived alleged war crimes by Turkey, including a Turkish MP from the pro-Kurdish party HDP. It also includes Die Linke (Left Party) MPs Ulla Jelpke and Andrej Hunko, several scientists from Germany and other European countries and refugee aid organizations.

Erdogan is not the only target of the suit, which also accuses former Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and Interior Minister Efkan Ala, as well as senior members of the police and army, of complicity in war crimes.

“The purpose of this principle is to prevent war crimes and crimes against humanity from going unpunished, no matter where the crime is committed,” the lawyers stated, as reported by The Local.

Relations between Germany and Turkey have been tense in recent months, especially after the German Parliament voted to recognize the massacre of Armenians by the Ottoman empire in 1915-16 as a genocide and Ankara recalled its ambassador from Berlin.

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