Board of Directors

BOARD LEADER
Kariane Westrheim
Rafto Foundation 
e-mail: kariane.westrheim@iuh.uib.no

Kariane Westrheim, PhD, is Associate Professor at the University of Bergen (Norway), Department of Education. She has been a Board Member of the Rafto Foundation since 2001, which is one of the founding organisations of the EUTCC. The Rafto Foundation awarded the Kurdish Parliamentarian Leyla Zana with the Rafto Prize in 1994. Westrheim has participated in fact finding missions and has conducted field research in Kurdish areas. Kariane Westrheim is Chair of the EU Turkey Civic Commission (EUTCC), since its foundation in 2004.

SECRETARY GENERAL
Michael Gunter
Tennessee Technological University
e-mail: MGunter@tntech.edu

Michael M. Gunter is a professor of political science at Tennessee Technological University in Cookeville, Tennessee and teaches during the summer at the International University in Vienna, Austria. He is the author of six critically prised scholarly books on the Kurdish question; the most recent being The Kurds Ascending: The Evolving Solution to the Kurdish Problem in Iraq and Turkey, 2008; Kurdish Historical Dictionary, 2004; The Kurdish Predicament in Iraq: A Political Analysis, 1999; and The Kurds and the Future of Turkey, 1997. In addition, he is co-editor (with Mohammed M. A. Ahmed) of The Kurdish Question and the 2003 Iraqi War, 2005; and The Evolution of Kurdish Nationalism, 2007. He has also published numerous scholarly articles on the Kurds in such leading periodicals as the Middle East Journal, Middle East Quarterly, Middle East Policy, Current History, Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies, Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, and Orient, among others, and was former Senior Fulbright Lecturer in International Relations in Turkey. He also has held Fulbright awards for China and Israel. He has been interviewed about the Kurdish question on numerous occasions by the international and national press. 

Kerim Yildiz is a writer and the founder and Executive Director of the Kurdish Human Rights Project (KHRP), the only independent non-political human rights organisation of its type dedicated to the promotion and protection of the human rights of all people in the Kurdish regions of Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Syria, the Caucasus and elsewhere. KHRP's work has contributed to important reforms in Turkey, including the lifting of the state of Emergency and abolition of state security courts.
Yildiz has written extensively on human rights including numerous essays, articles and books on freedom of expression, national security and minority rights published in English, Turkish and Russian.

MEMBERS
Hans Branscheidt
medico international
e-mail: kdi@gmx.de

Former Executive Director of medico international, Frankfurt. Editor of the
leading German Publication for development policy "Zeitschrift für
Entwicklungspolitik.".
President of  "Mezopotamian Development Society" MESOP e.V.  Former Delegate
of German Development NGO's to LICO Brussels. Near East Journalist.

Mark Muller QC
Bar Human Rights Committee of England and Wales

Mark Muller QC is a barrister, currently with Garden Court Chambers. Mr Muller was Head of Chambers at 10-11 Gray's Inn Square from 1998. He is also a Vice-President of the Bar Human Rights Committee (BHRC) and Chair of the Kurdish Human Rights Project (KHRP). He mainly specialises in international human rights and criminal related litigation.
Mark Muller has conducted a multitude of cases before the European Court of Human Rights, including Abdulla Öcalan v. Turkey and Issa & Others v. Turkey. He has also provided advice and representation in human rights related actions brought before the European Court of Justice of the European Union. Mark Muller has been instrumental in devising and providing ECHR training to lawyers throughout Europe, including Turkey, Armenia and Azerbaijan, and has published fact finding and trial observations reports detailing the systematic abuse of human rightsin the Kurdish areas of Turkey, as well as numerous legal reports and a book entitled " The Kurdish Nationalist Movement in the 1990's".

Sehnaz Turan
TOHAV
e-mail:sehnaz_turan@hotmail.com

Sehnaz Turan is a human rights defence lawyer. She started her profession as a lawyer in Diyarbakir in 1998. She has worked for Prison Committee of Diyarbakir Bar Association - Amnesty International of Diyarbakir Branch and Human Rights Association. She is currently president of the Foundation for Society and Legal Studies (TOHAV) based in Istanbul. TOHAV is a non-governmental, legal organisation founded by lawyers to be in solidarity with the victims of human rights. The objective of TOHAV is mainly to absorb, to carry out and to put the fundamental principles of democracy and international law in the social and the governmental life. '

Ayhan Bilgen
Former President, Peace Parliament, Turkey

Jan Beghin
senator Brussels Parliament
e-mail:jbeghin@parlbru.irisnet.be

Member of the Brussels Regional Parliament since 1989. Former member of the Flemisch Regional Parliament and former Mayor of Ganshoren in Brussels. Parliamentarian activities: Economics, poverty and human rights issues.