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ERBIL, Kurdistan Region—NATO member Iceland is concerned about ongoing events in Turkey and will place “stronger emphasis” on human rights violations against Kurds in the southeast of the country.Iceland’s Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee met on Tuesday to discuss recent events in Turkey, including the crackdown on the military and civil society after the failed coup of July 15, and “the most serious aspect [of] the situation in southeast Turkey, where a curfew has been in operation more or less since August last year in … [areas] where Kurds are in the majority,” according to a statement released by the political party the Left-Green Movement.MP Ögmundur Jónasson urged the Icelandic government to raise the issue with NATO, where Iceland and Turkey are both members, and other places where the two countries have a common presence.During the meeting, Foreign Minister Lilja Dögg Alfreðsdóttir expressed concern about the situation in Turkey and said, “[F]rom here forward, we will place stronger emphasis on human rights violations committed against Kurds and other minorities in Turkey,” according to the Left-Green Movement.Jónasson hailed the result of the discussion, saying, “The meeting was very useful, with firm consensus that Icelanders should protest human rights violations in Turkey and extend vigorous objection to the persecution of the Kurds and other minorities.”Former Foreign Minister and Social Democratic MP Össur Skarphéðinsson echoed the concerns and called on Iceland to raise the issue internationally. “Iceland must protest this vigorously,” he said on his Facebook page. “Turkey is with us in NATO and we need to take the matter up at this level.”Some 307 civilians have been killed in the past year in clashes between the Turkish army and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and military curfews imposed on Kurdish cities and towns, according to the International Crisis Group. Hundreds of thousands of Kurds have been displaced; in some places, up to 80 percent of the population has moved.Germany has seen a dramatic increase in the number of Kurds seeking asylum. According to the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (Bamf), 1,719 people from Turkey applied for asylum in Germany in the first half of 2016. That is almost equal to the total who applied in all of last year, 1,767.Of the applicants, 1,510 are Kurdish. Despite the increase in numbers, the acceptance rate for Kurds from Turkey is just 5.2 percent, according to Bamf figures.