The perpetrators came at 1.10 a.m. Before they struck, they sprayed the surveillance cameras with black paint. There should be no pictures of what they were up to: an attack on the kebab production company Gurbet AG in Dulliken SO. First they sprayed slogans on the facade, then they damaged the parked delivery vans, smashed the windows of the factory and threw butyric acid inside.
The attack was two weeks ago. The public did not notice anything. One thing is clear so far: The attack was aimed at the owner of the company, Suat Sahin. The Turkish businessman is the head of the World Turkish Business Council in Switzerland – and an ardent Erdogan supporter.
Sahin maintains close ties to the Ankara power apparatus and has been inciting against critics of the Turkish autocrat. After the failed coup attempt in Turkey in 2016, he wrote on Facebook: “We will storm the caves of the Gülen movement and coup sympathizers together.”
The attack on the firm of the Erdogan loyalist is only the latest in a series of attacks. Strangers have struck more than half a dozen times in the past six months.
Bomb robots in Rümlang
In mid-April, Erdogan’s opponents damaged a Turkish nationalist’s car in Basel.
At the beginning of May, a bomb robot in Rümlang ZH had to defuse an explosive device in the mailbox of the Turkish Community of Switzerland (TGS). The association is close to the ruling AKP party.
At the end of the year, three masked people attacked the private house of TGS President Serif Yilmaz. They threw paint-filled glasses against the facade, sprayed threats on the walls and stabbed the tires of his car.
Yilmaz says: “We are dealing with very well-planned attacks here.” The security authorities would have to do everything possible to bring the perpetrators to account. Police and public prosecutors in several cantons are currently investigating at full speed.
The traces lead to militant sympathizers of the Kurdish Workers’ Party PKK. At most crime scenes, the attackers sprayed slogans on the walls. “Biji PKK” was emblazoned on the facade of the kebab company in Dulliken, Kurdish for: “Long live the PKK.” And on Serif Yilmaz’s house, the perpetrators left three meter high red letters: APO – the battle name of the imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan.
Against Erdogan’s wars of aggression
After the attacks, anonymous letters of confession appeared on the Internet. They were directed against the Turkish state and its representatives, against Erdogan’s wars of aggression against the Kurds and against the persecution of critics.
In spring, autonomous groups published a communiqué on relevant websites. They wrote: «We call for the internationalist offensive # fight4revolution, as a militant contribution to #smashturkishfascism!» And they threatened the «accomplices of Turkish fascism»: «We will show them that they are nowhere safe!»
The Federal Intelligence Service (NDB) has been monitoring the PKK’s activities in Switzerland for a long time. In recent years, these have been limited primarily to collecting money and recruiting new cadres. The FIS does not want to comment on the attacks in recent months.
It is unclear whether PKK members of Kurdish origin are actually behind the attacks. It is also possible that they are sympathizers from the radical left. The left-wing scene keeps working with Kurdish activists.
In particular, the Kurdish autonomous zone of Rojava in Syria serves many leftists from Switzerland as a model for a society with equal rights. Some even traveled on site and joined the armed struggle against the Islamic State (IS).