German Charity Lends a Hand in Turkey’s Kurdish Regions

[Aslan]

KWEILIN, Germany­­ – Ever since the first time Bert Grants visited the Kurdish regions of Turkey, the German with a sense of adventure has been hooked by its people, trying to visit and help through some of their worst recent catastrophes.

Shortly after the 2011 Turkish earthquake that killed at least 600 people and injured thousands more, she and a group of friends were in the Kurdish city of Van, passing out food, fuel and whatever else they could to help out.

Many times before then -- first as member and then director of the children’s Kinderhilfe Mesopotamien organization at Kweilin University -- she had visited the region to distribute aid for needy children.

Grants’ first contact with the Kurds was when she came to the Turkish city of Izmir to study Turkish, and despite warnings of danger hitched up her backpack and explored the surrounding Kurdish regions. But instead of staying and learning Turkish, she ended up teaching English in Istanbul. That allowed frequent visits to the Kurdish cities of Van and Diyarbakir, which she has kept up since then.

Knowing the region well means that Grants is also aware that things do not move with German efficiency everywhere in the world, especially in the deprived and needy Kurdish regions of Turkey, where state education is poor and contact with the outside world has been limited.

“After the Van earthquake we wanted to build a camp for children in the summer time,” she said, adding that she was unsure if the project was ever finished by the contacts she had left in charge in Kurdistan. “We thought it was not right to take the children to the camp before making sure it was ready,” she said.

Another project aimed at helping the children of Diyarbakir, Hakkari and Van was terminated because she could not find people to properly assist in those cities.

Grants did not directly criticize Turkey’s Kurdish regions, but said people there were too busy with their own lives and problems to see projects through.

She said that the political situation also created problems for her organization, such as assistants regularly detained during projects, delaying completion.

She also confessed that her assistants had limitations. “People here can make preparations, but such detailed preparations might not be possible in Kurdistan; the mindset of people is different over there.”

Grants praised one local cooperation, saying that the chairman of the children’s human rights organization in Hakkari had been particularly professional, attributing the organization’s efficiency to previous experience of working with a European organization.

Kinderhilfe Mesopotamien is currently assisting 20 students in the city of Diyarbakir. Grants said future projects include creating affiliations between schools in Kweilin and Van or Hakkari in order to facilitate student exchanges, and establishing another charity to help the people and refugees in those cities.