Erdogan’s critics in Germany living in fear of his long arm


Date posted: October 3, 2016

As post-coup crackdown persists, with reports cleric Gulen’s brother arrested, conflict spills into Europe.

When Ercan Karakoyun goes to a restaurant in Kreuzberg or Neukölln, Berlin’s boroughs with a large migrant population, he never sits with his back to the door. When he leaves, he looks left and right before exiting, to make sure no one is waiting for him. He also stopped visiting Turkish mosques, fearing an attack. This is the new reality of life for critics of the Turkish government, he says, even in the German capital.

Karakoyun heads the Foundation for Dialogue and Education in Germany, the official representative of the Hizmet movement identified with exiled cleric Fethullah Gülen, who was blamed by Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan for instigating July’s attempted coup.

The foundation – which strongly denies Ankara’s allegations – operates in Germany 150 tutoring centers, 30 schools and some 15 inter-faith dialog centers, and is supported by up to 100,000 German-Turks – that have now become a target for Erdogan’s advocates.

“There are death threats, our institutions are destroyed, stones that are thrown at the windows, there’s graffiti,” told Karakoyun to i24news. He too received death threats, including from onetime friends and classmates.

“People now find their names on lists sent via WhatsApp to different people, denouncing them as Hizmet sympathizers and demanding to boycott them. It is very alarming and people are afraid,” he added. Police have launched dozens of investigations but no arrests were made so far, as perpetrators remain anonymous.

The German-Turkish community has always been extremely divided, with imported rivalries between Erdogan’s conservative proponents, Hizmet’s religious moderates, Kurds and Kemalists (adherers to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s secular reforms). “But we have never faced something like this in Germany,” stressed Karakoyun, “and it shows how long Erdogan’s arm is.”

Tensions between critics of the Turkish president and his supporters grew in recent months also in Belgium and the Netherlands, which are too home to a large Turkish minority, but Germany with its community of three million ethnic Turks (the largest outside Turkey) has become the main hotspot.

The threats made against Hizmet followers can easily constitute a hate crime, asserts the movement’s German chief. “Just because you can spell the name Gülen, you are viewed as a terrorist, which is absurd. The people here have nothing to do with the coup. I don’t even think that the people of Hizmet in Turkey had anything to do with it, not to mention a supermarket owner in Berlin’s Kreuzberg.”

But their persecution following the failed coup is now causing even German residents to try and avoid association with Hizmet, says Karakoyun, thus hindering the movement’s efforts to create dialog and facilitate integration.

“We just want to avoid confrontations. We tell our sympathizers to go to Bosnian or Arab mosques instead of Turkish ones, just to avoid provocations.”

This restrained behavior, he believes, is the main reason why no significant violent incidents were recorded so far, but with media reports that Turkey’s intelligence service is operating in Germany a 6,000-men-strong network of informants, concerns of an escalation only mount.

Many Hizmet sympathizers now also seek to obtain a German citizenship, relinquishing their Turkish one, believing this would protect them, both on German soil and if they visit Turkey.

Their targeting is also largely motivated by envy, argues Karakoyun, since while the majority of Turks in Germany are poorly-educated conservatives, Hizmet members represent a well-integrated, well-established new German-Turkish middle class.

But the Turkish conflict’s spillover now endangers all of this – not only by playing into the hands of the far-right, which wonders how can migrants be allowed to “carry out their fights on our streets,” but even by causing German politicians, including Chancellor Angela Merkel, to question whether this reflects a lack of loyalty of German-Turks to their new home.

Karakoyun rejects the allegations: It’s rather a problem of integration than of allegiances, he argues. “They [Erdogan’s supporters] don’t understand what democracy and human rights really means. In a demonstration in Cologne after the coup, 30,000 Turkish people were shouting in favor of the death penalty and in support for a de facto dictator, who forbids all kinds of demonstrations in his country.”

Now Erdogan also tries to instrumentalize Turkish institutions in Germany and have them spread propaganda on his behalf, in the hopes of influencing Germany’s politics through its large Turkish community, added Karakoyun.

The German authorities should therefore take a stronger stand against such intervention, he insisted. “We need more support and clearer statements, because carrying over Turkey’s atmosphere here only damages the integration of Turks and of Islam in Germany.”

Polina Garaev is the i24news correspondent in Germany

Read more: Merkel to German-Turks: Be loyal!

 

 

Source: i24 News , October 3, 2016


Related News

Handcuffed justice

The ruling party has been undermining rule of law since the graft and bribery investigation that became public on December 17, 2013. It sees itself unfettered by laws and the Constitution. It has been sticking to the hoax of “parallel structure” –a veiled reference to members of the Hizmet movement inspired by Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen– in a desperate attempt to cover up the graft investigations.

The role of civil society in Turkey’s democratization

BÜLENT KENEŞ  May 22, 2012 Neither the state nor political parties can act as guarantees for democratization and democracy. With the fact that the main impetus behind and guarantee for our democratization is our ever-growing civil society, we need to consider whether we are attaching due importance to “Civil Society Organizations”. In the speech I […]

Afghan Parents Complain to UN Over Detention of Turkish Teachers

The parents’ committee of Afghan-Turk schools on Monday called for an end to the oversight by the security forces on the movement of all those teachers who were last week detained during a raid in Kabul.

Another Police Chief Jailed Over Alleged Gülen Links Dies In Turkish Prison

Fifty-two-year-old Ahmet Tatar, a police chief who was arrested as part of an investigation into the Gülen movement in Osmaniye province, has died in prison, the TR724 website has reported.

Prof. Ergil: Gülen is in general a very bashful person

Fethullah Gülen’s general conduct is modest. He does not consider himself superior to anybody else, and he holds tolerance in the highest regard. The way that these values reveal themselves in his personal conduct are that Gülen listens carefully to others before he begins to speak. He is also in general a very bashful person.

Why the West ‘failed to understand’ Turkey

Erdoğan has exploited the presence of Gülen-inspired people in the state bureaucracy as a tool to silence all opposition and grasp yet more power. If the Gülen movement did not exist, the president would have needed to create another “enemy of the state” to fight against in order to reach his ultimate aim.

Latest News

Fethullah Gulen – man of education, peace and dialogue – passes away

Fethullah Gülen’s Condolence Message for South African Human Rights Defender Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Hizmet Movement Declares Core Values with Unified Voice

Ankara systematically tortures supporters of Gülen movement, Kurds, Turkey Tribunal rapporteurs say

Erdogan possessed by Pharaoh, Herod, Hitler spirits?

Devious Use of International Organizations to Persecute Dissidents Abroad: The Erdogan Case

A “Controlled Coup”: Erdogan’s Contribution to the Autocrats’ Playbook

Why is Turkey’s Erdogan persecuting the Gulen movement?

Purge-victim man sent back to prison over Gulen links despite stage 4 cancer diagnosis

In Case You Missed It

Peace Islands Institute Honors Remarkable Individuals

Teacher gets arrested, wife suffers miscarriage amid gov’t crackdown on Gülen movement

Hizmet movement in the spotlight at MESA 2012

Turkish school staff among 230 more evacuated from Yemen

Fethullah Gülen’s Message of Condolences for the Beirut Explosion

25 World Rights Groups Demand Turkey Scrap Emergency Rule

Kimse Yok Mu launches aid campaign for Gazans

Copyright 2025 Hizmet News