Turkey Renews Focus on Ending Its Long Conflict With Kurds

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/06/world/europe/turkey-renews-focus-on-peace-with-kurds.html?_r=0

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Wed, Mar 6, 2013 at 8:30 AM
Subject: re: Turkey Renews Focus on Ending Its Long Conflict With Kurds
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

   Prime Minister Erdogan has done much to improve the lot of Kurds in Turkey. But if he truly wants peace, he should look to the charter of the U.N. that Turkey helped to found in 1945. All U.N. members are pledged to national self-determination of peoples. That means a State for the Kurds as surely as for the Turks. To be sure, many U.N. member states fail to delver on this pledge, whether it's the Chinese in Tibet, the Russians in Chechnya the Israelis in the West Bank or a dozen others. But the path to peace begins with granting the other his dignity and rights. There is no path to peace that doesn't go through justice.

Barry Haskell Levine