Jürgen Klute
Yüksel Koç, a Kurdish politician who had been living in Germany for many years, was arrested on 20 May 2025 in his home in Bremen. According to his lawyer, his apartment was also searched by the police without a search warrant. No concrete evidence to justify the police action was presented, according to a press release issued by the Berlin-based Kurdish Centre for Public Relations Civaka Azad. The German Federal Prosecutor’s Office accuses the Kurdish politician, who was co-chair of the Kurdish umbrella organisation KCDK-E from 2016 to 2023, of membership in a foreign terrorist organisation – namely the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is classified as a terrorist organisation in Germany.
This action by the German police against a Kurdish politician, which is not an isolated case, is both ridiculous and dangerous.
The actions of the German police and the public prosecutor’s office are ridiculous because the PKK decided at its 12th congress from 5 to 7 May 2025 to dissolve itself and thus end its armed struggle for the rights of the Kurdish people in Turkey and pave the way for a political solution to the so-called Kurdish question. While the Belgian Supreme Court ruled that the PKK is a party to an internal armed conflict and the US army has been cooperating with the PKK since 2014 to push back the terrorist rule of the so-called Islamic State (Daesh), the German public prosecutor’s office and politicians in Germany continue to regard the PKK as a terrorist organisation.
Opinions may differ on the necessity and legitimacy of armed resistance. However, it is indisputable that the Kurds living in Turkey have been oppressed in many ways by the Turkish government since the founding of modern Turkey in 1924 and deprived of their rights, and that armed resistance did not arise without reason. Since the 1980s, the Turkish government has often used its secret service, police and army with great brutality, not only against the PKK, but also against Kurdish civilians and politicians. The bloody civil war in Turkey, which has claimed tens of thousands of lives on both sides, has now come to an end – 47 years after the founding of the PKK – because the PKK has decided and initiated its self-dissolution on the recommendation of its founder Abdullah Öcalan. The PKK is thus demonstrating that it is serious about finding a political solution to the conflict. However, it remains unclear whether the Turkish government is prepared to end its repression of Kurds in return for the PKK’s self-dissolution.
Regardless of whether Yüksel Koç is a member of the PKK or not, it seems ridiculous in such a situation for German authorities to prosecute a Kurdish politician living in Germany on charges of belonging to an organisation that has just opened the door to ending an armed conflict in Turkey that has lasted for more than 40 years.
However, this ignorance on the part of the German public prosecutor’s office is not only ridiculous, it is also dangerous. It is dangerous because there is clearly no awareness in the German political landscape of the political steps that are now necessary to support and advance the peace process that is currently re-emerging in Turkey.
An important political signal would now be to stop classifying the PKK as a terrorist organisation and to urge the EU to finally remove the PKK from its list of terrorist organisations. This would send a signal to the Turkish government to also push ahead with the peace process on its side so that it does not fail again, as it did in 2014. Kurdish politicians living in Germany and other EU countries now need political support from the German government and the European Union to ensure that a lasting peace process that is recognised as fair by both sides can be achieved. Precisely because the German government traditionally has close ties to the Turkish government, it should not persecute Kurdish politicians living in Germany, but should urge the Turkish government to do everything in its power to ensure that a peace agreement will finally be reached. However, peace will only be lasting if the Turkish government and ultimately Turkish society as a whole recognise the Kurds – and other ethnic groups – as equal members of Turkish society, including the guarantee of cultural self-determination rights and minority protection. There are plenty of examples that show how this can work.
The PKK’s decision to disband is embedded in a deeper process of upheaval in the Middle East. This includes the changes that began in Iran in 2022, the overthrow of Syrian dictator Assad, which was both a consequence of Russia’s weakening due to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in violation of international law and of the terrorist attack by Hamas on Israel on 7 October 2023, and the Israeli government and army’s response to the terrorist act by Hamas in Gaza, which is now unacceptable from a human rights perspective. These violent upheavals are taking place against the backdrop of the ever-worsening climate crisis and the necessary and ongoing phase-out of fossil fuels.
If the European Union wants to stabilise the political situation, it still has a brief window of opportunity to take advantage of the period of upheaval in the Middle East. This requires swift and targeted action, something along the lines of a Marshall Plan for the Middle East.
As the most populous and by far the strongest member state of the European Union, Germany has a central role to play in the development of such a political project. It would make more sense for the new federal government to focus on this instead of imprisoning innocent Kurdish politicians living in Germany.
Jürgen Klute is a former Die Linke (The Left) MEP and spokesman for the Kurdish Friendship Group in the European Parliament from 2009 to 2014. He is editor of Europa.blog and a columnist for Medya News.
