Erdogan in the Federal Chancellery

Today, the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) sent an appeal to all members of the German Bundestag, asking them to act on the German Chancellor to cancel the upcoming visit of Turkish President Erdoğan – as his visit, which was scheduled for November 18, would be a fatal sign to the enemies of freedom and human rights, and also detrimental to Germany’s international reputation: “These days, Erdoğan is acting as an advocate of hate against Israel and the Jewish people. The president of a state that has NATO’s second-largest army declared the radical-Islamist Hamas to be “liberators”. At the same time, he is responsible for daily bomb raids on neighboring states in order to drive out members of minority groups and to Islamize the region,” stated Dr. Kamal Sido, the STP’s Middle East Correspondent, in Göttingen today. “We are asking the German Bundestag to ensure that the Chancellor will not endorse this behavior by inviting him to the Federal Chancellery.” 

Together with the Emir of Qatar, Erdoğan is one of the most important supporters of radical Sunni Islam – to which the so-called “Islamic State” (IS) belongs as well. “Under the banner of NATO, Erdoğan’s army is fighting against the ‘Syrian Democratic Forces’, which can be seen as the ground troops of the anti-IS coalition,” Sido reported. “He has been keeping large parts of a neighboring state occupied for years – illegally. His army and its allied mercenaries are responsible for countless serious human rights violations in the region. Therefore, the Turkish President can rightly be described as a war criminal. The Chancellor should not receive him.”

The German Bundestag and the Federal Government should make any further rapprochement with Turkey dependent on how the country positions itself with regard to human rights, the rule of law, and international law. The long list of critical topics includes freedom of the press and freedom of opinion in Turkey, discrimination against minorities within the country and expulsion of minorities in other countries, as well close cooperation with Russia and Iran.  

The appeal to the members of the German Bundestag can be found here (in German).