“Alliance for Peace and Fairness” launched as “the first Muslim party” in Germany is said to have ties with AKP and Gülen community. Yesterday, Zaman newspaper published a news article titled “Muslims founded a Party in Germany” to herald the emergence of a new political party named “Alliance for Peace and Fairness” which will be on the ballot for the upcoming elections in North Rhein Westphalia, Germany. Fethullah Gülen community and AKP’s organizations in Germany are said to stand behind the Party. Starting out three years ago with the formation named “Muslim Council” in Bonn to embrace the other Muslim groups together with Turks, “Muslim Party” as Zaman calls it, was consequently restructured as a Party and is now headed by Chairman Haluk Yıldız.
Haluk Yıldız spoke about the formation as follows: “First of all, we brought the Muslims together. We had talks with the Municipality for a Muslim cemetery. We will obtain the result soon. There are plans for two mosques. Permission for one of them has already been received. Talks continue for the other one. We are involved in the problems at the schools. We have handled headscarf issue and participation of Muslim students in school trips and swimming lessons. We have formed a team of 6 for this purpose. We have appointed two lawyers. Since we are an institution, the municipality and the school administration takes us into consideration. This way it became easier to solve the problems.”
According to what Yıldız said, there was a discussion within Muslim Arabs in the city “as to whether voting in the elections is permissible according to Islam or not”, but, the formation which is believed to have relationship with Gülen Community interfered in the discussion. Yıldız says this: We have convinced Imams. They gave a fatwa and Arab countries also supported the idea of a Party.”
An independent formation? New formation, of course, doesn’t say that it has an organic relationship with any one of the groups in Turkey. But, Gülen community and AKP support to the group is plainly discussed in Germany. For instance, German journalist Gudrun Eussner is of the opinion that “The word justice in the name of the Party refers to AKP. In addition to this, expressions like, “No to assimilation and discrimination’ show a parallelism with the speech Prime Minister Erdoğan had made in Cologne last year.” The news published two days ago with the signature of Ulrike Hummel in Deutsche Welle says that “Alliance for Peace and Fairness” has 50 members at the moment. Considering their forming a special team of six and appointing two lawyers to follow up a very specific issue like participation of Muslim students in school trips and swimming lessons, according to what Chairman Haluk Yıldız said in the interview he gave to Zaman, it ‘s not quiet convincing to say such an organized group has 50 members only.
