As Germany prepares to go to the polls on September 24th, the public debate has zoned in on questions of immigration, integration, and Islam. Consequently, German Muslims are under particular scrutiny in the run-up to an election that will most definitely hand a good number of parliamentary seats to the openly Islamophobic AfD party. German…
Amidst escalating political tensions between Germany and Turkey, three of Germany’s Turkish-dominated Islamic associations have made clear their perspective on the causes of the current diplomatic spat. Joint press release On the anniversary of last year’s military coup attempt in Turkey, the DİTİB, IGMG, and ATİB organisations issued a joint press release, calling for a…
A charged political atmosphere On July 31st, 2016, up to 40,000 people, most of them German Turks, congregated on the banks of the river Rhine in Cologne to show their support for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the wake of the country’s failed coup. German media and politicians presented the rally in an…
A British teenager who made a graveside pledge to devote herself to the PKK cause has been convicted of intending to join the proscribed Kurdish terrorist organisation to fight Islamic State. Silhan Özçelik, 18, from north London, ran away from home, took a train to Brussels, and left behind letters and a video for her…
Because of the IS crisis in Iraq some European nations decided to equip the Kurds in northern Iraq with modern weapons. This, according to the daily newspaper Der Standard, leads to serious concerns in Turkey. Turkey’s foreign minister Mevlüt Cavusoglu said last week during a NATO meeting, that the terror organization PKK (Kurdish Workers Party)…
