AKP politicians threatened opponents
Diplomatic upset after Turkish hate video
01/17/2023, 2:20 p.m
During an election campaign in Neuss, an AKP politician talks himself into a rage and shoots violently at PKK and Gülen supporters, among others. The Foreign Ministry is angry – and threatens the consequences.
A few months before the parliamentary and presidential elections in Turkey, an appearance by a Turkish politician in Germany caused resentment. The Turkish ambassador was invited to the Foreign Ministry in Berlin because of the incident. “Appearances like that of a Turkish MP in Neuss must not be repeated. Hate speech and hate speech have no place in Germany,” wrote the Foreign Office on Twitter.
It was “unmistakably” reminded that foreign campaign events would have to be approved in advance. “If Turkish representatives do not follow the rules of the game, we have to examine the consequences,” it said.
Inviting an ambassador is a more gentle form of protest. The next level of criticism would be a formal summons. The most drastic diplomatic sanction is the expulsion of another country’s ambassador.
AKP MP calls for “annihilation” of PKK supporters
The member of parliament for the ruling AKP party in Turkey, Mustafa Acikgöz, published a video on Twitter on Friday in which he pledged his party’s supporters in Germany to the upcoming elections in Turkey. The parliamentary and presidential elections are scheduled to take place in June, but according to the presidential office they are to be brought forward to May.
In the video, the AKP MP called for the “annihilation” of supporters of the banned Kurdish Workers’ Party PKK and the so-called Gülen organization. As in Turkey, they will not be given the right to live in Germany either, he said according to the video. “With God’s permission, anywhere in the world we will pull them out of the holes they have been hiding in and destroy them,” he said. Supporters of the PKK are “godless enemies” of the religion, and the Gülen organization wants to change and “Christianize” the Muslim faith, according to Acikgöz. Shouts of approval can be heard from the audience in the video.
Four ads after the appearance of a Turkish politician
The police in the North Rhine-Westphalian Rhein-Kreis Neuss announced that they had received four reports about the politician’s appearance.
Campaign appearances by foreign politicians have been banned for three months before elections or votes in their countries since 2017. Outside of election campaign times, all political appearances by foreign government members must be applied for ten days in advance and approved by the federal government. With the regulation, the then federal government had drawn consequences from the dispute over appearances by Turkish politicians before a constitutional referendum in Turkey in 2017.
The spokesman for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Ibrahim Kalin, told journalists on Saturday that Turkey respected the regulations and was adhering to them.