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A group of German politicians and public figures have filed a lawsuit against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, accusing him of committing war crimes against his country's Kurdish minority, The Local  reports.

According to the source, the suit has been lodged with federal prosecutors in Karlsruhe, the legal team which devised it told state broadcaster ARD on Monday.

Lawyers Britta Eder and Petra Dervishaj told ARD their clients saw it as “a moral duty to bring a suit here in Germany against the systematic war crimes taking place in Turkey.”

The suit, which is 200 pages long, claims Turkey has committed war crimes in Kurdish majority regions of the country, particularly in the city of Cizre in the Sirnak province, where NGOs say some 178 civilians were killed in February while taking shelter in basements, and whose bodies were later found burned up - some perhaps burned alive.

The civilians took cover from Turkish artillery fire in a cellar, according to the suit, but despite calls to emergency services, no doctors or journalists were allowed through to see them.

The bodies of the civilians were later found burned and, according to eyewitnesses, military personnel were seen pouring gasoline into the cellar and setting it alight, the suit claims.
Other eye witnesses cited in the suit say that the soldiers shot and killed civilians before burning the building.

Among those represented in the suit are two people the lawyers say survived war crimes by Turkey, as well as a Turkish MP from the Kurdish party HDP.

Also listed in bringing the suit are Die Linke (Left Party) MPs Ulla Jelpke and Andrej Hunko, several scientists from Germany and other European countries, the composer and actor Konstantin Wecker and refugee aid organizations.

Erdogan is not the only Turkish official whom the suit targets. Ex-prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu and interior minister Efkan Ala, as well as senior members of the police and army.

According to German interpretation of international criminal law, it is possible to file a suit for a crime alleged to have been committed outside the borders of the Bundesrepublik.

“The purpose of this principle is to prevent war crimes and crimes against humanity from going unpunished, no matter where the crime is committed,” the lawyers stated.