Kurds are the losers

Turkey's Kurdish minority is the big loser of the constitutional reform, writes the daily Neue Zürcher Zeitung: "Not a single paragraph curtailing the rights of the country's biggest minority has been modified. Despite the modest improvements in recent times Turkish schools have yet to introduce Kurdish-language instruction. The use of Kurdish in local administrations remains banned. The government has also shied away from amending paragraph 66 of the constitution, which says that 'Everyone bound to the Turkish state through the bond of citizenship is a Turk' - including the Kurds. As long as the government refuses to replace the word 'Turk' with 'Turkish citizen' and thus improve the legal situation of the minorities, the many avowals to European standards ring hollow."

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