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A reform programme aimed at according greater rights to minorities was presented by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on September 30.
The "democratic package" includes provisions to partially lift a ban on wearing headscarves in public areas, to lower the 10 per cent threshold currently necessary for parties to enter parliament, to end the daily recitation by school children of the patriotic oath, and to allow the Kurdish language to be taught in private schools.
Pro-government daily Star says that these measures will ensure that –
Turkey will leave behind a system in which part of the establishment supervised the entire society and operated on fear. This package shows that concepts based on negation and assimilation are disappearing. The authorisation to teach Kurdish – even if limited to private schools – and the end of the recitation of the [patriotic and nationalistic] oath in primary schools, among others, illustrate this.
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Pro-Kurd daily Özgür Gündem on the other hand, considers that the measures concerning the Kurds will only "amuse the peanut gallery". The daily notes the absence of proposals on the strengthening of local powers and regrets that no political prisoners were freed or that the system of "village protectors" – Kurdish pro-governmental, paramilitary militias – was not disbanded.
As for left-leaning daily *Radical, it says that the statute accorded to the Kurds is finally similar to that of other recognised minorities (Greeks, Armenians and Jews) but bemoans the fact that
nothing in this package addresses the serious attacks on the fundamental rights of the many Kurdish activists who are victims of the broad definition of what constitutes terrorism.
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